Steve Martin

The theft rate when the mirror was present? Only 8.9 percent.80

In a similar vein, one of us conducted a study examining

how focusing people on themselves and their own image makes them act more consistently with their values

Besides telling us how to arrange our Halloween treats, this research indicates that carefully placed mirrors can encourage kids to act more kindly toward one another. Also, a manager who has experienced employee theft—in the organization’s stockroom, for example—might find that mirrors do wonders to reduce stealing. In this case, mirrors act as a good alternative to video surveillance, which is not only costly, but sends a signal to the employees that they’re not trusted—a prospect that can actually lead to greater employee theft down the line, not less.82

Bateson and colleagues suggests that placing a simple picture of eyes on the wall also has the effect of getting others to act in more socially conscious ways

As these findings demonstrate, it can’t hurt to have another pair of eyes looking over the situation, regardless of whether they’re yours or someone else’s

The results supported Lerner’s assertions. Sad buyers were willing to purchase the item for around 30 percent more than were emotionally neutral buyers. And sad sellers were willing to part with the item for around 33 percent less than were their emotionally neutral counterparts. What’s more, the researchers found that the carryover of the emotion from the movie into their economic decisions occurred completely outside of the subjects’ awareness—they had no idea they had been so deeply affected by these residual feelings of sadnes

It’s not just the negative emotions that can affect our decision-making tendencies. Behavioral scientists Christopher Hsee and Yuval Rottenstreich have asserted that people’s judgment and decision-making abilities can be impaired by any emotionally charged issue, regardless of the positivity or negativity of the feelings it produces. They argue that emotions lead people to become less sensitive to differences in the magnitude of numbers; in other words, people are more likely to pay attention to the simple presence or absence of an event as opposed to the specific numbers that characterize the event

How can we prevent these factors from influencing us? The findings from this study indicate that doing something as simple as focusing on numbers and calculations before the negotiation should help restore your ability to differentiate between the magnitudes of numbers. It might even behoove you to come prepared with a pricing

sheet and a calculator in hand, and always keep them in front of you on the table