In my coaching and speaking I refer to an experiment where one person is given twenty dollars and told that they decide how much to give to a second person. The second person has one chance to say yes or no. The catch is that both people have to end up with some money or neither receive any.
Earlier this week I did this with two volunteers at a speech I gave at a professional association conference. The volunteer with the twenty dollars offered two dollars. What would you say? Exactly, she said “No!” They both ended up with no money. In the study, about 50% offer ten dollars, everyone rejects an offer of three or less and most accept an offer of seven or more. This reflects our deeply held need for fairness. It’s human nature to reject an offer that is unfair even if it means you don’t end up with anything. It is sometimes easy to forget that people are often not logical, like machines, especially in a business environment that is focused on efficiency and continuous improvement.
When I coach people or conduct workshops I share studies like this to emphasize how important it is to take human needs or values into account. In that study, economists predicted that most people would offer one dollar, because that made logical sense, and boy were they ever wrong.
Deeply held human needs and values often defy logic, keep this in mind when you are programming your internalGPS for your journey that includes interacting with other humans (what journey doesn’t?).