Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, Second Edition, The

Building Trust: Implicit Emotional Mechanisms

There are a variety of psychologically based ways of enhancing and building trust between people. These psychological mechanisms distinguish themselves from the rational, cognitive mechanisms discussed earlier in that people tend not to talk about these factors explicitly; rather, savvy negotiators know how to capitalize on them intuitively.

Similarity

People who are similar to each other like one another (Griffin and Sparks 1990). The similarity–attraction effect occurs on the basis of very little, and sometimes downright trivial, information. For example, consider a situation in which people write down all of the ways in which they are similar to their opponent. A different group writes down all ...