Reactive Devaluation

Hi,

This week’s email is about an issue that causes people to wrongly reject good opportunities.

Here are the key practical points you should know (mainly from my article):

• Reactive devaluation is a cognitive bias that causes people to devalue things that are offered to them, especially if offered by someone they perceive negatively.

• For example, reactive devaluation can cause someone to wrongly dismiss a good business proposal as bad, just because they dislike the person who offered it.

• Reactive devaluation can lead to the rejection of valuable opportunities, breakdown of negotiations, and serious interpersonal conflicts.

• To reduce reactive devaluation, you can focus on the proposal itself (rather than the party who made it), pretend that it came from someone else, and highlight its benefits as well as the downsides of reactively devaluing it.

• Other ways to reduce reactive devaluation—including when making offers to others—are to explicitly list the goals of both sides in advance and/or go through a third-party mediator.

As always, I’m happy to hear your thoughts.

Have a great week,
Itamar