Full episode: Subjective value, with Dr. Jared Curhan

Is negotiation all about objective outcomes like money and how good a deal we got? It turns out that’s not the full story. In this episode, Dr. Jared Curhan from the MIT Sloan School of Management teaches us about the meaning and importance of subjective value in negotiation. Dr. Curhan’s findings show we can actually build subjective value – that is, how we feel at the end of a negotiation (and how our counterpart feels) – in our negotiations without sacrificing our objective outcomes. Moreover, Dr. Curhan’s research shows that our subjective value influences our future negotiation performance in important ways. Dr. Curhan provides research-based advice and practical tips for how we can leverage the concept of subjective value to help our negotiations, and offers some sneak-peek insights on other exciting questions for future research on subjective value. Dr. Jared Curhan bio: Jared R. Curhan is the Gordon Kaufman Professor and an Associate Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as Faculty Director of MIT’s Behavioral Research Lab. Curhan specializes in the psychology of negotiation and conflict resolution. A recipient of support from the National Science Foundation, he has pioneered a social psychological approach to the study of “Subjective Value” in negotiation. He also studies creative problem-solving and micro-processes in negotiation. Curhan is Vice Chair for Research and a member of the Executive Committee of the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, a world-renowned inter-university consortium dedicated to developing the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution. He is also Director of the PON Research Lab and Director of MIT's Negotiation for Executives Program. Deeply committed to education at all levels, Curhan has received MIT's Institute-wide teaching award, MIT’s Teaching with Technology Award, and MIT Sloan's Jamieson Prize for excellence in teaching. He offers a 10-week, open-enrollment online course with live negotiations, Mastering Negotiation and Influence. Curhan holds an AB in psychology from Harvard University and an MS and a PhD in psychology from Stanford University.Articles referenced in the episode:Becker, W. J., & Curhan, J. R. (2018). The dark side of subjective value in sequential negotiations: The mediating role of pride and anger. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(1), 74–87. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000253Curhan, J. R., Elfenbein, H. A., & Eisenkraft, N. (2010). The objective value of subjective value: A multi-round negotiation study. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40(3), 690–709. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00593.x Curhan, J. R., Elfenbein, H. A., & Kilduff, G. J. (2009). Getting off on the right foot: Subjective value versus economic value in predicting longitudinal job outcomes from job offer negotiations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(2), 524–534. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013746 Curhan, J. R., Elfenbein, H. A., & Xu, H. (2006). What do people value when they negotiate? Mapping the domain of subjective value in negotiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 493–512. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.3.493 Curhan, J. R., Overbeck, J. R., Cho, Y., Zhang, T., & Yang, Y. (2021). Silence is golden: Extended silence, deliberative mindset, and value creation in negotiation. Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000877Curhan, J. R., & Pentland, A. (2007). Thin slices of negotiation: Predicting outcomes from conversational dynamics within the first 5 minutes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 802-811. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.802Li, R., Curhan, J. R., Hoque, M. E. (2018) Understanding social interpersonal interaction via synchronization templates of facial events. The Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-18).