survival8

Saturday, January 21, 2023

What's focal is causal (And a story about false confessions)

It’s no wonder that we assign elevated import to factors that have our attention. We also assign them causality. Therefore, directed attention gives focal elements a speciﬁc kind of initial weight in any deliberation. It gives them standing as causes, which in turn gives them standing as answers to that most essential of human questions: Why? Because we typically allot special attention to the true causes around us, if we see ourselves giving such attention to some factor, we become more likely to think of it as a cause. Take monetary payments. Because the amount of money is so salient in the exchanges—“I’ll pay you x when you do y”—we tend to infer that the payment spurred the act, when, in fact, it was often some other, less visible factor. Economists, in particular, are prone to this bias because the monetary aspects of a situation dominate their attentions and analyses.

Thus, when Harvard Business School economist Felix Oberholzer-Gee approached people waiting in line at several diﬀerent venues and oﬀered them money to let him cut in, he recognized that a purely economics-based model would predict that the more cash he oﬀered, the more people would agree to the exchange. And that’s what he found: half of everyone oﬀered $1 let him cut in line; 65 percent did so if oﬀered them $3, and acceptance rates jumped to 75 percent and 76 percent when he proposed the larger sums of $5 and $10.
According to classical economic theory, which enshrines ﬁnancial self- interest as the primary cause of human behavior, those greater incentives convinced people to take the deal for their own ﬁscal betterment. How could any observer to the transaction doubt it? The highly visible incentives caused the obtained eﬀects due to their direct links to personal monetary gain, right? Nothing surprising occurred here, right? Well, right, except for an additional ﬁnding that challenges all this thinking: almost no one took the money.“Gee,” Oberholzer-Gee must have said to himself, “that’s odd.” Indeed, a number of oddities appeared in his data, at least for adherents to the idea that the ultimate cause of human action is one’s own ﬁnancial interest. For instance, although bigger cash incentives upped compliance with the line cutter’s wish, they didn’t increase acceptance of the payment; richer deals increasingly caused people to sacriﬁce their places in line but without taking the greater compensation. To explain his ﬁndings, Oberholzer-Gee stepped away from a consideration of salient economic factors and toward a hidden factor: an obligation people feel to help those in need.
The obligation comes from the helping norm, which behavioral scientists sometimes call the norm of social responsibility.

It states that we should aid those who need assistance in proportion to their need. Several decades’ worth of research shows that, in general, the more someone needs our help, the more obligated we feel to provide it, the more guilty we feel if we don’t provide it, and the more likely we are to provide it. When viewed through this lens, the puzzling ﬁndings make perfect sense. The payment oﬀers stimulated compliance because they alerted recipients to the amount of need present in the situation. This account explains why larger ﬁnancial inducements increased consent even though most people weren’t willing to pocket them: more money signaled a stronger need on the part of the requester. (“If this guy is willing to pay a lot to jump ahead of me, he must really need to get to the front fast.”)

It would be naïve to assert that ﬁscal factors are less than potent determinants of human action. Still, I’d argue that merely because they are so visible (and, therefore, prominent in attention), they are often less determining than they seem. Conversely, there are many other factors— social obligations, personal values, moral standards—that, merely because they are not readily observable, are often more determining than they seem.
Elements such as money that attract notice within human exchanges don’t just appear more important, they also appear more causal. And presumed causality, especially when acquired through channeled attention, is a big deal for creating inﬂuence—big enough to account for patterns of human conduct that can range from perplexing to alarming.

Taking a Chance

In the ﬁrst of these categories, consider the most famous case of product tampering of all time. In the autumn of 1982, someone went into supermarkets and drug stores in the Chicago area, injected packaged capsules of Tylenol with cyanide, and then returned the containers to the store shelves, where they were later purchased. Several reasons exist for the incident’s long-standing notoriety. First, seven Chicago residents died from ingesting the poison—four of them family members who had swallowed capsules from the same Tylenol container. Second, their killer has never been found, giving the crime an uncomfortably memorable lack of closure.
But, for the most part, the case lives on today not so much for these regrettable reasons as for a pair of favorable ones: it led to the passage of important product safety legislation and to pharmaceutical industry shifts to tamperproof seals and packaging that have reduced risks to consumers. In addition—owing to the rapid, customer-centered steps taken by Tylenol’s maker, Johnson & Johnson, which recalled thirty-one million of the capsules from all stores—it produced a textbook approach to proper corporate crisis management that is still considered the gold standard. (The recommended approach urges companies to act without hesitation to fully inform and protect the public, even at substantial expense to its own immediate economic interests.) Aside from these high-proﬁle features, another element of the case has gone almost entirely unnoticed but strikes me as remarkable. Early on, after it had been determined that the deaths were linked to bottles of Tylenol but before the extent of the tampering had been established, Johnson & Johnson issued nationwide warnings intended to prevent further harm. One widely communicated sort of warning alerted consumers to the production lot numbers on the aﬀected bottles—numbers that identiﬁed where and when a particular batch of capsules had been manufactured. Because they were the ﬁrst to be identiﬁed, two of the numbers received the most such publicity: lots 2,880 and 1,910.

Immediately, and bewilderingly, US residents of states that ran lotteries began playing those two numbers at unprecedented rates. In three states,
Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, oﬃcials announced that they had to halt wagers on the numbers because betting on them shot above “maximum liability levels.”To know how best to account for this set of events, let’s review the characteristics of the numbers. First, they were ordinary; not inherently memorable in any way. Second, they were associated with grievous misfortune. Moreover, they were intensely connected in American minds to imagery of poison-fed death. Yet many thousands of those minds responded to something about the numbers that lifted expectations of lottery success.
What? Our previous analysis oﬀers one answer: Because of all the publicity surrounding them, they had become focal in attention; and what is focal is seen to have causal properties—to have the ability to make events occur.
It turned out that every one of the minds that thought those numbers would provide an advantage over chance was proved wrong by the subsequent lottery results. But I doubt that the losses taught those minds to avoid, in any general way, similar future errors. The tendency to presume that what is focal is causal holds sway too deeply, too automatically, and over too many types of human judgment.

Taking a Life

Imagine that you are in a café enjoying a cup of coﬀee. At the table directly in front of you, a man and a woman are deciding which movie to see that evening. After a few minutes, they settle on one of the options and set oﬀ to the theater. As they leave, you notice that one of your friends had been sitting at the table behind them. Your friend sees you, joins you, and remarks on the couple’s movie conversation, saying, “It’s always just one person who drives the decision in those kinds of debates, isn’t it?” You laugh and nod because you noticed that too: although the man was trying to be diplomatic about it, he clearly was the one who determined the couple’s movie choice.
Your amusement disappears, though, when your friend observes, “She sounded sweet, but she just pushed until she got her way.”
Dr. Shelley Taylor, a social psychologist at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), knows why you and your friend could have heard the same conversation but come to opposite judgments about who determined the end result. It was a small accident of seating arrangements: you were positioned to observe the exchange over the shoulder of the woman, making the man more visible and salient, while your friend had the reverse point of view. Taylor and her colleagues conducted a series of experiments in which bservers watched and listened to conversations that had been scripted carefully so that neither discussion partner contributed more than the other.
Some observers watched from a perspective that allowed them to see the face of one the parties over the shoulder of the other, while other observers saw both faces from the side, equally. All the observers were then asked to judge who had more inﬂuence in the discussion, based on tone, content, and direction. The outcomes were always the same: whomever’s face was more visible was judged to be more causal.
Taylor told me a funny but nonetheless enlightening story about how she ﬁrst became convinced of the power of the what’s-focal-is-presumed-causal phenomenon. In setting up the initial study, she arranged for a pair of research assistants to rehearse a conversation in which it was critical for each discussion partner to contribute about equally. Standing alternately behind ﬁrst one and then the other person, she found herself criticizing whomever she was facing for “dominating the exchange.” Finally, after several such critiques, two of Taylor’s colleagues, who were watching the conversation partners from the side, stopped her in exasperation, asserting that, to them, neither partner seemed to be dominating the conversation. Taylor reports that she knew then, without a single piece of data yet collected, that her experiment would be a success because the rehearsal had already produced the predicted eﬀect—in her.
No matter what they tried, the researchers couldn’t stop observers from presuming that the causal agent in the interaction they’d witnessed was the one whose face was most visible to them. They were astonished to see it appear in “practically unmovable” and “automatic” form, even when the conversation topic was personally important to the observers; even when the observers were distracted by the researchers; even when the observers experienced a long delay before judging the discussants; and even when the observers expected to have to communicate their judgments to other people.
What’s more, not only did this pattern emerge whether the judges were male or female, but also it appeared whether the conversations were viewed in person or on videotape.26
When I asked Taylor about this last variation, she recalled that the taping was done for reasons of experimental control. By recording the same discussion from diﬀerent camera angles, she could ensure that everything about the conversation itself would be identical every time she showed it. When her results were ﬁrst published, that videotaped interactions could produce the what’s-focal-is-presumed-causal eﬀect was not viewed as an important facet of Taylor’s ﬁndings. But circumstances have now changed, because certain kinds of videotaped interactions are used frequently to help determine the guilt or innocence of suspects in major crimes. To register how and why this is so, it is necessary to take an instructive detour and consider a frightening component of all highly developed criminal justice systems: the ability of police interrogators to generate confessions from individuals who did not commit the crime.
Extracted false confessions are unsettling for a pair of reasons. The ﬁrst is societal and concerns the miscarriages of justice and the aﬀronts to fairness that such manufactured confessions create within any culture. The second is more personal, involving the possibility that we ourselves might be induced to confess by the tactics of interrogators convinced, mistakenly, of our guilt.
Although for most of us such a possibility is remote, it is likely to be more real than we think. The idea that no innocent person could be persuaded to confess to a crime, especially a serious one, is wrong. It happens with disquieting frequency. Even though the confessions obtained in the great majority of police interrogations are in fact true and are corroborated by other evidence, legal scholars have uncovered a distressingly large number of elicited false confessions. Indeed, the confessions have often been shown later to be demonstrably false by evidence such as physical traces (DNA or ﬁngerprint samples), newly obtained information (documentation of the suspect’s presence hundreds of miles away from the crime), and even proof that no crime occurred (when a presumed murder victim is discovered alive and well).27
The same legal scholars have proposed a long list of factors that can help explain persuaded false confessions. Two strike me as particularly potent. I can relate to the ﬁrst as an ordinary citizen. If I were asked by authorities to come to the police station to help them resolve the suspicious death of one of my neighbors—perhaps one I’d argued with in the past—I’d be glad to oblige. It would be the civically responsible thing to do. And if during the consequent questioning I began to feel that I was a suspect in police eyes, I might continue on anyway without demanding to be represented by a lawyer because, as an innocent man, I’d be conﬁdent that my interrogators would recognize the truth in what I told them. Plus, I wouldn’t want to conﬁrm any doubts they harbored about my innocence by seeming to hide behind a lawyer; instead, I’d want to walk away from the session with all those doubts dismissed.28
As a person of interest, my understandable inclinations—to help the police and then to convince them against my involvement—could lead me to ruin, though, for the other potent reason induced false confessions occur.

In this instance, it’s a reason I can relate to as a student of social inﬂuence: by deciding to persist through the interview on my own, I might subject myself to a set of techniques perfected by interrogators over centuries to get confessions from suspects. Some of the techniques are devious and have been shown by research to increase the likelihood of false confessions: lying about the existence of incriminating ﬁngerprints or eyewitness testimony; pressing suspects to repeatedly imagine committing the crime; and putting them into a brain-clouded psychological state through sleep deprivation and relentless, exhaustive questioning. Defenders of such tactics insist that they are designed to extract the truth. An accompanying, complicating truth, however, is that sometimes they just extract confessions that are veriﬁably untrue.

A Story About False Confessions

Eighteen-year-old Peter Reilly’s life changed forever one night in 1973 when he returned home from a youth meeting at a local church to ﬁnd his mother on the ﬂoor, dying in a pool of blood. Though shaken and reeling from the sight, he had the presence of mind to phone for help immediately. By the time aid arrived, however, Barbara Gibbons had died. An examination of the body revealed that she had been murdered savagely: her throat had been cut, three ribs had been broken, and the thigh bones of both legs had been fractured.
At ﬁve foot seven and 121 pounds, and with not a speck of blood on his body, clothes, or shoes, Peter Reilly seemed an unlikely killer. Yet from the start, when they found him staring blankly outside the room where his mother lay dead, the police suspected that Peter had murdered her. Some people in their Connecticut town laughed at her unconventional ways, but many others were not amused, describing her as unpredictable, volatile, belligerent, and unbalanced. She appeared to take delight in irritating the people she met—men especially—belittling, confronting, and challenging them. By any measure, Barbara Gibbons was a diﬃcult woman to get along with. So it didn’t seem unreasonable to police oﬃcials that Peter, fed up with his mother’s constant antagonisms, would “ﬂy oﬀ the handle” and murder her in a spasm of rage.
At the scene and even later when taken in for questioning, Peter waived his right to an attorney, thinking that if he told the truth, he would be believed and released in short order. That was a serious miscalculation, as he was not prepared, legally or psychologically, for the persuasive assault he would face. Over a period of sixteen hours, he was interrogated by a rotating team of four police oﬃcers, including a polygraph operator who informed Peter that, according to the lie detector, he had killed his mother. That exchange, as recorded in the interrogation’s transcript, left little question of the operator’s certainty in the matter:

Peter: Does that actually read my brain?

Polygraph operator: Deﬁnitely. Deﬁnitely.

Peter: Would it deﬁnitely be me? Could it have been someone else?

Polygraph operator: No way. Not from these reactions.

Actually, the results of polygraph examinations are far from infallible, even in the hands of experts. In fact, because of their unreliability, they are banned as evidence in the courts of many states and countries.
The chief interrogator then told Peter, falsely, that physical evidence had been obtained proving his guilt. He also suggested to the boy how he could have done it without remembering the event: he had become furious with his mother and erupted into a murderous ﬁt during which he slaughtered her, and now he had repressed the horrible memory. It was their job, Peter’s and his, to “dig, dig, dig” at the boy’s subconscious until the memory surfaced.
Dig, dig, dig they did, exploring every way to bring back that memory, until Peter began to recall—dimly at ﬁrst but then more vividly—slashing his mother’s throat and stomping on her body. By the time the interrogation was over, these imaginations had become reality for both the interrogators and Peter:

Interrogator: But you recall cutting her throat with a straight razor.

Peter: It’s hard to say. I think I recall doing it. I mean, I imagine myself doing it. It’s coming out of the back of my head.

Interrogator: How about her legs? What kind of vision do we get there? Can you remember stomping her legs?

Peter: You say it, then I imagine I’m doing it.

Interrogator: You’re not imagining anything. I think the truth is starting to come out. You want it out.

Peter: I know...

Analyzing and reanalyzing these images convinced Peter that they betrayed his guilt. Along with his interrogators, who pressured him to break through his “mental block,” the teenager pieced together from the scenes in his head an account of his actions that ﬁt the details he’d been given of the murder.
Finally, a little more than twenty-four hours after the grizzly crime, though still uncertain of many speciﬁcs, Peter Reilly confessed to it in a written, signed statement. That statement conformed closely to the explanation that had been proposed by his interrogators and that he had come to accept as accurate, even though he believed none of it at the outset of his questioning and even though, as events demonstrated later, none of it was true.
When Peter awoke in a jail cell the next day, with the awful fatigue and the persuasive onslaught of the interrogation room gone, he no longer believed his confession. But it was too late to retract it convincingly. To virtually every oﬃcial in the criminal justice system, it remained compelling evidence of his guilt: a judge rejected a motion to suppress it at Peter’s trial, ruling that it had been made voluntarily; the police were so satisﬁed that it incriminated Peter that they stopped considering other suspects; the prosecuting attorneys made it the centerpiece of their case; and the jury that ultimately convicted Peter of murder relied on it heavily in its deliberations.
To a one, these individuals did not believe that a normal person could be made to confess falsely to a crime without the use of threats, violence, or torture. And to a one, they were mistaken: Two years later, when the chief prosecutor died, evidence was found hidden in his ﬁles that placed Peter at a time and in a location on the night of the crime that established his innocence and that led to the repeal of his conviction, the dismissal of all charges, and his release from prison.

If you admit, we don’t acquit. Peter Reilly surrounded by deputy sheriﬀs taking him to prison after his conviction.

There is an old saying that confession is good for the soul. But for criminal suspects, it is bad for just about everything else. Those who confess are much more likely to be charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to harsh punishment. As the great American jurist Daniel Webster recognized in 1830, “There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is a confession.” A century and a half later, renowned US Supreme Court Justice William Brennan expanded upon Webster’s assertion with a stunning observation about the criminal justice system: “the introduction of a confession makes other aspects of a trial in court superﬂuous; and the real trial, for all purposes, occurs as the confession is obtained.”
There is chilling evidence that Brennan was right. An analysis of 125 cases involving fabricated confessions found that suspects who ﬁrst confessed but then renounced their statements and pled not guilty were still convicted at trial 81 percent of the time—yet these, recall, were all false confessions! Peter Reilly suﬀered the same fate as the great majority of individuals persuaded to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, which raises a legitimate question: Why should we spotlight his confession over other more publicized and harrowing cases with the same outcome—for example, those in which multiple suspects were convinced to claim that, as a group, they had perpetrated a crime none of them had committed? Notably, it wasn’t anything that had occurred during his interrogation, trial, conviction, or subsequent legal battles. It surfaced at an event twenty years later where Peter, who had been employed on and oﬀ in various low- level sales jobs, was a speaker on a panel considering the causes and consequences of wrongfully obtained confessions and where it was described, not by Peter, but by a man sitting next to him with the ordinaryname of Arthur Miller. This, though, was no ordinary Arthur Miller. It was the Arthur Miller, who some view as the greatest-ever American playwright, who wrote what some view as the greatest-ever American drama, Death of a Salesman, and who—if that isn’t enough to draw our notice—was married for ﬁve years to the woman some view as the greatest-ever American sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe.

Life for a salesman. Arthur Miller and Peter Reilly, who had worked in various sales positions, twenty years after the murder.

After being introduced to the audience by Peter as one of his key supporters, Miller explained his presence on the panel as due to a long- standing concern with “the business of confessions, in my life as well as in my plays.” During the period of anti-Communist fervor in the United States, in the 1950s, several of Miller’s friends and acquaintances were summoned to appear at hearings before congressional committees. There they were pushed in calculated questioning to confess to Communist Party aﬃliations as well as to knowing (and then revealing) the names of members of the party prominent in the entertainment world. Miller himself was subpoenaed by the US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was blacklisted, ﬁned, and denied a passport for failing to answer all the chairman’s questions.
The role of confessions in Miller’s plays can be seen in e Crucible, the most frequently produced of all his works. Although set in 1692 during the Salem witchcraft trials, Miller wrote it allegorically to reﬂect the form of loaded questioning he witnessed in congressional hearings and that he later recognized in the Peter Reilly case.
Miller’s comments on the panel with Reilly were relatively brief. But they included an account of a meeting he had in New York with a Chinese woman named Nien Cheng. During Communist China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which was intended to purge the country of all captialistic elements, she was subjected to harsh interrogations designed to get her to confess to being an anti-Communist and a spy. With tear-rimmed eyes, Nien related to the playwright her deep feelings upon seeing, after her eventual release from prison, a production of e Crucible in her native country. At the time, she was sure that parts of the dialogue had been rewritten by its Chinese director to connect with national audiences, because the questions asked of the accused in the play “were exactly the same as the questions I had been asked by the Cultural Revolutionaries.” No American, she thought, could have known these precise wordings, phrasings, and sequencings.
She was shocked to hear Miller reply that he had taken the questions from the record of the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials—and that they were the same as were deployed within the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. Later, it was the uncanny match to those in the Reilly interrogation that prompted Miller to get involved in Peter’s defense.30
A scary implication arises from Miller’s story. Certain remarkably similar and eﬀective practices have been developed over many years that enable investigators, in all manner of places and for all manner of purposes, to wring statements of guilt from suspects—sometimes innocent ones. This recognition led Miller and legal commentators to recommend that all interrogations involving major crimes be videotaped. That way, these commentators have argued, people who see the recordings—prosecutors, jury members, judges—can assess for themselves whether the confession was gained improperly. And, indeed, video recording of interrogation sessions in serious criminal cases has been increasingly adopted around the globe for this reason. It’s a good idea in theory, but there’s a problem with it in practice: the point of view of the video camera is almost always behind the interrogator and onto the face of the suspect.
The legal issue of whether a confession had been made freely by the suspect or extracted improperly by an interrogator involves a judgment of causality—of who was responsible for the incriminating statement. As we know from the experiments of Professor Taylor, a camera angle arranged to record the face of one discussant over the shoulder of another biases that critical judgment toward the more visually salient of the two. We also know now—from the more recent experiments of social psychologist Daniel Lassiter—that such a camera angle aimed at a suspect during an interrogation leads observers of the recording to assign the suspect greater responsibility for a confession (and greater guilt). Moreover, as was the case when Taylor and her coworkers tried it, Lassiter and his coworkers found this outcome to be stubbornly persistent. In their studies, it surfaced regardless of whether the observers were men or women, college students or jury-eligible adults in their forties and ﬁfties, exposed to the recording once or twice, intellectually deep or shallow, and previously informed or not about the potentially biasing impact of the camera angle. Perhaps most disturbingly, the identical pattern appeared whether the watchers were ordinary citizens, law enforcement personnel, or criminal court judges.
Nothing could change the camera angle’s prejudicial impact—except changing the camera angle itself. The bias disappeared when the recording showed the interrogation and confession from the side, so that the suspect and questioner were equally focal. In fact, it was possible to reverse the bias by showing observers a recording of the identical interaction with the camera trained over the suspect’s shoulder onto the interrogator’s face; then, compared with the side-view judgments, the interrogator was perceived to have coerced the confession. Manifestly here, what’s focal seems causal.
Thus, a potential dilemma exists for an innocent person—perhaps you— invited to a police station to help investigators solve a major crime. There is certainly nothing wrong with complying and providing that assistance; it’s what good citizens do. But matters would get more complicated if you began to sense that the session was designed not so much to obtain information from you as to obtain a possible confession from you. The standard recommendation of defense attorneys at this point would be to stop the proceedings and request a lawyer. That choice, though, has its risks. By terminating the session, you might not be able to give your questioners the facts they need to solve the crime quickly and to discount your involvement fully, which would allow you to dispel the specter of suspicion then and there.
Being suspected of a serious crime can be a terrifying, nasty, lingering experience that might well be prolonged by the appearance of having something to conceal. But choosing to go on with the increasingly interrogation-like session includes perils of its own. You might be laying yourself open to tactics that have evolved in disparate places over centuries to extract incriminating statements from suspects, including blameless ones.
There are ample grounds for caution here because, wherever employed, these are the techniques that have proven themselves to interrogators most able to achieve that end.
Suppose, after considering your options, you decide to soldier on through the interview in an earnest attempt to clear your name. Is there anything you could do to increase the odds that, should you be somehow tricked or pressured into making falsely incriminating comments, external observers would be able to identify the tricks and pressure as the causes? There is. It comes in two steps, straight from the research of Professors
Taylor and Lassiter.
First, ﬁnd the camera in the room, which will usually be above and behind the police oﬃcer. Second, move your chair. Position yourself so that the recording of the session will depict your face and your questioner’s face equally. Don’t allow the what’s-focal-is-presumed-causal eﬀect to disadvantage you at trial. Otherwise, as Justice Brennan believed, your trial might already be over.31
By the way, if you ever found yourself in the interview situation I described, and you chose to end the session and demand a lawyer, is there anything you might do to reduce police suspicions that you therefore have something to hide? I have a suggestion: blame me. Say that, although you’d like to cooperate fully on your own, you once read a book that urged you to consider extensive police questioning unsafe, even for innocent individuals.
Go ahead, blame me. You can even use my name. What are the police going to do, arrest me on a trumped-up charge, bring me down to the stationhouse, and employ Machiavellian tactics to gain a false confession? They’ll never win a conviction, because I’ll just ﬁnd the camera and move my chair.
Evidence that people automatically view what’s focal as causal helps me to understand other phenomena that are diﬃcult to explain. Leaders, for example, are accorded a much larger causal position than they typically deserve in the success or failure of the teams, groups, and organizations they head. Business performance analysts have termed this tendency “the romance of leadership” and have demonstrated that other factors (such as workforce quality, existing internal business systems, and market conditions) have a greater impact on corporate proﬁts than CEO actions do; yet the leader is assigned outsize responsibility for company results. Thus even in the United States, where worker wages are relatively high, an analysis showed that the average employee in a large corporation is paid one half of 1 percent of what the CEO is paid. If that discrepancy seems hard to account for on grounds of economic or social fairness, perhaps we can account for it on other grounds: the person at the top is visually prominent, psychologically salient, and, hence, assigned an unduly causal role in the course of events.

End Note

In sum, because what’s salient is deemed important and what’s focal is deemed causal, a communicator who ushers audience members’ attention to selected facets of a message reaps a signiﬁcant persuasive advantage: recipients’ receptivity to considering those facets prior to actually considering them. In a real sense, then, channeled attention can make recipients more open to a message pre-suasively, before they process it. It’s a persuader’s dream, because very often the biggest challenge for a communicator is not in providing a meritorious case but in convincing recipients to devote their limited time and energy to considering its merits.
Perceptions of issue importance and causality meet this challenge exquisitely.
If captured attention does indeed provide pre-suasive leverage to a communicator, a related issue arises: Are there any features of information that don’t even require a communicator’s special eﬀorts to draw attention to them because, by their nature, they draw attention to themselves?

Reference
Chapter 4: from Presuasion (A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade) by Robert Cialdini

32 Word Meanings (from Beyond Order) - 2023 Jan 21

Index of Word Meanings

1.

denigrate

verb
verb: denigrate; 3rd person present: denigrates; past tense: denigrated; past participle: denigrated; gerund or present participle: denigrating

    criticize unfairly; disparage.
    "doom and gloom merchants who denigrate their own country"

    Similar:
    disparage

belittle
diminish
deprecate
cast aspersions on
decry
criticize unfairly
attack
speak ill of
speak badly of
blacken the character of
blacken the name of
give someone a bad name
sully the reputation of
spread lies about
defame
slander
libel
calumniate
besmirch
run down
abuse
insult
slight
revile
malign
vilify
slur
bad-mouth
do a hatchet job on
pull to pieces
pull apart
sling mud at
throw mud at
drag through the mud
rubbish
slag off
have a go at
slate
asperse
derogate
vilipend
vituperate

    Opposite:
    extol

Origin
late Middle English (in the sense ‘blacken, make dark’): from Latin denigrat- ‘blackened’, from the verb denigrare, from de- ‘away, completely’ + nigrare (from niger ‘black’).
Use over time for: denigrate

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2.

elephant under the rug

Usage. The term refers to a question, problem, solution, or controversial issue which is obvious to everyone who knows about the situation, but which is deliberately ignored because to do otherwise would cause great embarrassment, sadness, or arguments, or is simply taboo.

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3.

wrought

adjective

1 : worked into shape by artistry or effort. carefully wrought essays. 
2 : elaborately embellished 
3 : ornamented.

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4.

Intubation is a process where a healthcare provider inserts a tube through a person's mouth or nose, then down into their trachea (airway/windpipe). The tube keeps the trachea open so that air can get through. The tube can connect to a machine that delivers air or oxygen.

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5.

abate
/əˈbeɪt/

verb
past tense: abated; past participle: abated

    (of something unpleasant or severe) become less intense or widespread.
    "the storm suddenly abated"
    
    Similar:
    subside

die down/away/out
drop off/away
lessen
ease (off)
let up
decrease
diminish
moderate
decline
fade
dwindle
slacken
recede
cool off
tail off
peter out
taper off
wane
ebb
relent
desist
weaken
become weaker
come to an end
remit

Opposite:
intensify

    make (something) less intense.
    "nothing abated his crusading zeal"
    Law
    reduce or remove (a nuisance).
    "this action would not have been sufficient to abate the odour nuisance"
    h
    Similar:
    decrease

lessen
diminish
reduce
lower
moderate
ease
soothe
relieve
dampen
calm
tone down
alleviate
mitigate
mollify
allay
assuage
palliate
temper
appease
attenuate

        h
        Opposite:
        increase

Origin
Middle English (in the legal sense): from Old French abatre ‘to fell’, from a- (from Latin ad ‘to, at’) + batre ‘to beat’ (from Latin battere, battuere ‘to beat’).

---

6.

recuperation
/rɪˌk(j)uːpəˈreɪʃn/

Filter definitions by topic
See definitions in:
all
mechanics
politics

noun

noun: recuperation

    1.
    recovery from illness or exertion.
    "the human body has amazing powers of recuperation"
    2.
    the recovery or regaining of something lost or taken.
    "the recuperation of traditional scholarship"
        the action of a recuperator in imparting heat to incoming air or gaseous fuel from hot waste gases.
        "further energy saving has been achieved by heat recuperation"
    3.
    a process whereby a radical social or political movement or idea is assimilated into mainstream culture, thus diminishing its subversive force.
    "recuperation of social movements and rebellion will always happen"

---

7.

untenable
/ʌnˈtɛnəbl/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: untenable

    (especially of a position or view) not able to be maintained or defended against attack or objection.
    "this argument is clearly untenable"
    h
    Similar:
    indefensible

undefendable
unarguable
insupportable
refutable
unsustainable
unjustified
unwarranted
unjustifiable
inadmissible
unsound
ill-founded
flimsy
weak
shaky
flawed
defective
faulty
implausible
specious
groundless
unfounded
baseless
invalid
absurd
illogical
irrational
preposterous
senseless
unacceptable
h
Opposite:
tenable

---

8.

assiduously
/əˈsɪdjʊəsli/
Learn to pronounce
adverb
adverb: assiduously

    with great care and perseverance.
    "leaders worked assiduously to hammer out an action plan"

---

9.

coda
/ˈkəʊdə/
Learn to pronounce
nounMusic
noun: coda; plural noun: codas

    the concluding passage of a piece or movement, typically forming an addition to the basic structure.
    "the first movement ends with a fortissimo coda"
        the concluding section of a dance, especially of a pas de deux or the finale of a ballet in which the dancers parade before the audience.
        a concluding event, remark, or section.
        "his new novel is a kind of coda to his previous books"

Origin
mid 18th century: Italian, from Latin cauda ‘tail’.

---

10.

inchoate
/ɪnˈkəʊət,ɪnˈkəʊeɪt,ˈɪnkəʊət,ˈɪnkəʊeɪt/
adjective
adjective: inchoate

    1.
    just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary.
    "a still inchoate democracy"
        confused or incoherent.
        "inchoate proletarian protest"
    2.
    Law
    (of an offence, such as incitement or conspiracy) anticipating or preparatory to a further criminal act.

Origin
mid 16th century: from Latin inchoatus, past participle of inchoare, variant of incohare ‘begin’.

---

11.

denigrate
/ˈdɛnɪɡreɪt/
Learn to pronounce
verb
verb: denigrate; 3rd person present: denigrates; past tense: denigrated; past participle: denigrated; gerund or present participle: denigrating

    criticize unfairly; disparage.
    "doom and gloom merchants who denigrate their own country"
    h
    Similar:
    disparage

belittle
diminish
deprecate
cast aspersions on
decry
criticize unfairly
attack
speak ill of
speak badly of
blacken the character of
blacken the name of
give someone a bad name
sully the reputation of
spread lies about
defame
slander
libel
calumniate
besmirch
run down
abuse
insult
slight
revile
malign
vilify
slur
bad-mouth
do a hatchet job on
pull to pieces
pull apart
sling mud at
throw mud at
drag through the mud
rubbish
slag off
have a go at
slate
asperse
derogate
vilipend
vituperate

    h
    Opposite:
    extol

Origin
late Middle English (in the sense ‘blacken, make dark’): from Latin denigrat- ‘blackened’, from the verb denigrare, from de- ‘away, completely’ + nigrare (from niger ‘black’).

---

12.

familial
/fəˈmɪlɪəl/

adjective
adjective: familial

    relating to or occurring in a family or its members.
    "familial relationships"

Origin
mid 19th century: from French, from Latin familia ‘family’.

---

13.

buttress
/ˈbʌtrɪs/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: buttress; plural noun: buttresses

    1.
    a structure of stone or brick built against a wall to strengthen or support it.
    "the cathedral's massive buttresses"
    h
    Similar:
    prop

support
abutment
shore
pier
reinforcement
stanchion
stay

    strut
        a projecting portion of a hill or mountain.
    2.
    a source of defence or support.
    "she clung to her shrinking faith as a buttress against despair"

verb
verb: buttress; 3rd person present: buttresses; past tense: buttressed; past participle: buttressed; gerund or present participle: buttressing

    1.
    provide (a building or structure) with buttresses.
    "we buttressed the wall as it was showing signs of cracking and collapse"
    2.
    increase the strength of or justification for; reinforce.
    "authority was buttressed by religious belief"
    h
    Similar:
    strengthen

reinforce
fortify
support
prop up
bolster up
shore up
underpin
cement
brace
uphold
confirm
defend
maintain
back up

    buoy up

Origin
Middle English: from Old French (ars) bouterez ‘thrusting (arch)’, from boter ‘to strike or thrust’ (see butt1).

---

14.

allude
/əˈl(j)uːd/
Learn to pronounce
verb
past tense: alluded; past participle: alluded

    suggest or call attention to indirectly; hint at.
    "she had a way of alluding to Jean but never saying her name"
    h
    Similar:
    refer to

suggest
hint at
imply
mention
touch on
mention in passing
mention en passant
speak briefly of
make an allusion to
cite

    advert to
        mention without discussing at length.
        "we will allude briefly to the main points"
        (of an artist or a work of art) recall (an earlier work or style) in such a way as to suggest a relationship with it.
        "the photographs allude to Italian Baroque painting"

Origin
late 15th century (in the sense ‘hint at, suggest’): from Latin allus-, alludere, from ad- ‘towards’ + ludere ‘to play’.
Translate alluded to
Tip
Similar-sounding words
alluded is sometimes confused with eluded

---

15.

phylogenetically
/ˌfʌɪlə(ʊ)dʒɪˈnɛtɪkli/
adverbBiology
adverb: phylogenetically

    in a way that relates to the evolutionary development and diversification of a species or group of organisms.
    "phylogenetically related fish species"

---

16.

denizen
/ˈdɛnɪz(ə)n/
Learn to pronounce
noun
plural noun: denizens

    formal•humorous
    a person, animal, or plant that lives or is found in a particular place.
    "denizens of field and forest"
    h
    Similar:
    inhabitant

resident
townsman
townswoman
native
local
occupier
occupant
dweller
local yokel
burgher
burgess
habitant
residentiary
oppidan

    indweller
        historical•British
        a foreigner allowed certain rights in their adopted country.

Origin
late Middle English deynseyn, via Anglo-Norman French from Old French deinz ‘within’ (from Latin de ‘from’ + intus ‘within’) + -ein (from Latin -aneus ‘-aneous’). The change in the form of the word was due to association with citizen.

---

17.

putative
/ˈpjuːtətɪv/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: putative

    generally considered or reputed to be.
    "the putative author of the book"
    h
    Similar:
    supposed

assumed
presumed
acknowledged
accepted
recognized
commonly believed
commonly regarded
presumptive
alleged
reputed
reported
rumoured

    reputative

Origin
late Middle English: from Old French putatif, -ive or late Latin putativus, from Latin putat- ‘thought’, from the verb putare .

---

18.

jockey
/ˈdʒɒki/
Learn to pronounce
verb
gerund or present participle: jockeying

    struggle by every available means to gain or achieve something.
    "both men will be jockeying for the two top jobs"
    h
    Similar:
    compete

contend
vie
struggle
fight
tussle
scramble
push
jostle

    handle or manipulate (someone or something) in a skilful manner.
    "he jockeyed his machine into a dive"
    h
    Similar:
    manoeuvre

ease
edge
manipulate
work
steer
engineer
inveigle
insinuate
ingratiate
wheedle
coax
cajole

        finagle

Origin
late 16th century: diminutive of Jock. Originally the name for an ordinary man, lad, or underling, the word came to mean ‘mounted courier’, hence the current sense (late 17th century). Another early use ‘horse-dealer’ (long a byword for dishonesty) probably gave rise to the verb sense ‘manipulate’, whereas the main verb sense probably relates to the behaviour of jockeys manoeuvring for an advantageous position during a race.

---

19.

startling
/ˈstɑːtəlɪŋ,ˈstɑːtlɪŋ/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: startling

    very surprising, astonishing, or remarkable.
    "he bore a startling likeness to their father"
    h
    Similar:
    surprising

astonishing
amazing
unexpected
unforeseen
staggering
shocking
stunning
extraordinary
remarkable
dramatic
disturbing
unsettling
perturbing
disconcerting
disquieting
frightening
alarming
scary
h
Opposite:
predictable

    ordinary

startle
/ˈstɑːtl/
Learn to pronounce
verb
gerund or present participle: startling

    cause to feel sudden shock or alarm.
    "a sudden sound in the doorway startled her"
    h
    Similar:
    surprise

frighten
scare
alarm
give someone a shock
give someone a fright
give someone a jolt
make someone jump
perturb
unsettle
agitate
disturb
disconcert
disquiet
give someone a turn
flabbergast

    h
    Opposite:
    put at ease

Origin
Old English steartlian ‘kick, struggle’, from the base of start. The early sense gave rise to ‘move quickly, caper’ (typically said of cattle), whence ‘cause to react with fear’ (late 16th century).

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20.

baloney
/bəˈləʊni/
Learn to pronounce
nouninformal
noun: baloney; plural noun: baloneys

    1.
    foolish or deceptive talk; nonsense.
    "I don't buy it—it's all a load of baloney"
    2.
    North American
    variant of bologna.

--- 

21.

patsy
/ˈpatsi/
Learn to pronounce
nouninformal
noun: patsy; plural noun: patsies

    a person who is easily taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for something.
    "there is a mischievous sparkle in his eyes that suggests he is no patsy"

Origin

---

22.

toil
/tɔɪl/
Learn to pronounce
verb
verb: toil; 3rd person present: toils; past tense: toiled; past participle: toiled; gerund or present participle: toiling

    work extremely hard or incessantly.
    "we toiled away"
    h
    Similar:
    work hard

labour
work one's fingers to the bone
work like a Trojan
work like a dog
work day and night
exert oneself
keep at it
grind away
slave away
grub away
plough away
plod away
slog away
peg away
beaver away
plug away
put one's back into something
work one's guts out
work one's socks off
knock oneself out
sweat blood
kill oneself
graft away
fag
bullock
drudge
travail
moil
View 2 vulgar slang words
h
Opposite:
rest
relax
laze

    move slowly and with difficulty.
    "she began to toil up the cliff path"
    h
    Similar:
    struggle

move with difficulty
labour
trudge
tramp
traipse
slog
plod
trek
footslog
sweat
drag oneself
fight (one's way)
push
trog
yomp

        schlep

noun
noun: toil; plural noun: toils

    exhausting physical labour.
    "a life of toil"
    h
    Similar:
    hard work

toiling
labour
slaving
struggle
effort
exertion
application
industry
grind
slog
blood
sweat
and tears
drudgery
elbow grease
graft
(hard) yakka
travail

    moil

Origin

---

23.

consign
/kənˈsʌɪn/
Learn to pronounce
verb
past tense: consigned; past participle: consigned

    deliver (something) to a person's keeping.
    "he consigned three paintings to Sotheby's"
    h
    Similar:
    assign

allocate
place
put
entrust
grant
remit
hand down
bequeath
commend

    send (goods) by a public carrier.
    "the package was consigned by a famous sporting goods company"
    h
    Similar:
    send

send off
dispatch
transmit
transfer
convey
post
mail
ship
put someone or something in (a place) in order to be rid of it or them.
"she consigned the letter to the waste-paper basket"
h
Similar:
send
deliver
hand over
give over
turn over
sentence
confine in
imprison in
incarcerate in
lock up in
jail in
detain in
intern in
immure in
put away
put behind bars
bang up
deposit
commit
banish

        relegate

Origin
late Middle English (in the sense ‘mark with the sign of the cross’, especially at baptism or confirmation, as a sign of dedication to God): from French consigner or Latin consignare ‘mark with a seal’.

---

24.

sundry
/ˈsʌndri/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: sundry

    of various kinds; several.
    "prawn and garlic vol-au-vents and sundry other delicacies"
    h
    Similar:
    various

varied
miscellaneous
assorted
mixed
diverse
diversified
motley
random
several
numerous
many
manifold
multifarious
multitudinous
legion
divers

    farraginous

noun
plural noun: sundries; noun: sundry

    1.
    various items not important enough to be mentioned individually.
    "a drugstore selling magazines, newspapers, and sundries"
    2.
    Australian•Cricket
    a run scored other than from a hit with the bat, credited to the batting side rather than to a batter; an extra.

Origin
Old English syndrig ‘distinct, separate’; related to sunder.

---

25.

undercut
See definitions in:
all
commerce
geography
art
tennis
forestry
cooking
hairdressing
verb
verb: undercut; 3rd person present: undercuts; past tense: undercut; past participle: undercut; gerund or present participle: undercutting
/ˌʌndəˈkʌt/

    1.
    offer goods or services at a lower price than (a competitor).
    "these industries have been undercut by more efficient foreign producers"
    h
    Similar:
    charge less than

charge a lower price than
undersell
underbid
2.
cut or wear away the part below or under (something, especially a cliff).
"the base of the crag is undercut permitting walkers to pass behind the falling water"

    cut away material to leave (a carved design) in relief.

3.
weaken; undermine.
"the chairman denied his authority was being undercut"
h
Similar:
undermine
weaken
impair
damage
sap
threaten
subvert
sabotage
ruin
disrupt
undo
destabilize
demolish
wreck
destroy

    chip away
    4.
    Tennis
    strike (a ball) with backspin so that it bounces high on landing.

noun
noun: undercut; plural noun: undercuts
/ˈʌndəkʌt/

    1.
    a space formed by the removal or absence of material from the lower part of something.
    "there may be some bigger fish in the safety of the undercut"
        North American
        a notch cut in a tree trunk to guide its fall when felled.
    2.
    British
    the underside of a sirloin of beef.
    3.
    a hairstyle in which the hair is shaved or cut very short on the sides or back of the head but left relatively long on top.
    "she styled her short bob into an edgy undercut"

---

26.

menace
/ˈmɛnɪs/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: menace; plural noun: menaces

    a person or thing that is likely to cause harm; a threat or danger.
    "a new initiative aimed at beating the menace of drugs"
    h
    Similar:
    danger

peril
risk
hazard
threat
jeopardy

    a threatening quality or atmosphere.
    "he spoke the words with a hint of menace"
    h
    Similar:
    threat

ominousness
intimidation
warning
ill-omen

        commination
        British
        threatening words or actions.
        "a demand of money with menaces"
        informal
        a person or thing that causes trouble or annoyance.

verb
verb: menace; 3rd person present: menaces; past tense: menaced; past participle: menaced; gerund or present participle: menacing

    be a threat or possible danger to.
    "Africa's elephants are still menaced by poaching"
    h
    Similar:
    threaten

be a danger to
put at risk
jeopardize
imperil
loom over
bully
intimidate
issue threats to
frighten
scare
alarm
terrify
browbeat
cow
terrorize
threatening
ominous
black
thunderous
glowering
brooding
sinister
intimidating
frightening
terrifying
fearsome
mean-looking
alarming
forbidding
baleful
warning
minatory
minacious
looming
louring
in the wind
impending
brewing
dark
heavy
portentous
ugly
imminent
bodeful
h
Opposite:
friendly

    auspicious

Origin
Middle English: via Old French from late Latin minacia, from Latin minax, minac- ‘threatening’, from minae ‘threats’.

---

27.

irascible
/ɪˈrasɪb(ə)l/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: irascible

    having or showing a tendency to be easily angered.
    "an irascible and difficult man"
    h
    Similar:
    irritable

quick-tempered
short-tempered
bad-tempered
ill-tempered
hot-tempered
thin-skinned
snappy
snappish
tetchy
testy
touchy
edgy
crabby
waspish
dyspeptic
surly
cross
crusty
crabbed
grouchy
crotchety
cantankerous
curmudgeonly
ill-natured
ill-humoured
peevish
querulous
captious
fractious
bilious
narky
prickly
ratty
hot under the collar
iracund

    iracundulous

---

28.

maladaptive
/ˌmaləˈdaptɪv/
Learn to pronounce
adjectivetechnical
adjective: maladaptive

    not adjusting adequately or appropriately to the environment or situation.
    "maladaptive coping strategies such as increasing consumption of alcohol"

---

29.

tribulation
/ˌtrɪbjʊˈleɪʃn/
Learn to pronounce
noun
plural noun: tribulations

    a cause of great trouble or suffering.
    "the tribulations of being a megastar"
        a state of great trouble or suffering.
        "his time of tribulation was just beginning"
        h
        Similar:
        trouble

worry
anxiety
burden
cross to bear
affliction
ordeal
trial
adversity
hardship
tragedy
trauma
reverse
setback
blow
difficulty
problem
issue
misfortune
bad luck
stroke of bad luck
ill fortune
mishap
misadventure
suffering
distress
misery
wretchedness
unhappiness
sadness
heartache
woe
grief
pain
anguish
agony
hassle

        travails

Origin
Middle English: via Old French from ecclesiastical Latin tribulatio(n-), from Latin tribulare ‘press, oppress’, from tribulum ‘threshing board (constructed of sharp points)’, based on terere ‘rub’.

---

30.

siege
/siː(d)ʒ/
Learn to pronounce
See definitions in:
all
military
police
zoology
noun
plural noun: sieges

    1.
    a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling those inside to surrender.
    "Verdun had withstood a siege of ten weeks"
    h
    Similar:
    blockade

beleaguerment
encirclement
investment
besiegement
h
Opposite:
relief

    raising
        an operation in which a police or other force surround a building and cut off supplies, with the aim of forcing an armed person to surrender.
        "two cult members have died so far in the four-day siege"
    2.
    rare
    a group of herons.
    "there is a siege of herons at the river"

Origin

---

31.

salient
/ˈseɪlɪənt/

See definitions in:
all
architecture
heraldry
surveying
military history
adjective
adjective: salient

    1.
    most noticeable or important.
    "it succinctly covered all the salient points of the case"
    h
    Similar:
    important

main
principal
major
chief
primary
notable
noteworthy
outstanding
arresting
conspicuous
striking
noticeable
obvious
remarkable
signal
prominent
pronounced
predominant
dominant
key
crucial
vital
essential
basic
staple
critical
pivotal
prime
central
focal
paramount
h
Opposite:
unimportant

    inconspicuous
        prominent; conspicuous.
        "the salient object in my view"
    2.
    (of an angle) pointing outwards.
    3.
    Heraldry
    (of an animal) standing on its hind legs with the forepaws raised, as if leaping.

noun
noun: salient; plural noun: salients

    a piece of land or section of fortification that juts out to form an angle.

--- 

32.

piss off
phrasal verb of piss

    1.

vulgar slang•British
go away (used to angrily dismiss someone).
h
Similar:
go away
depart
leave
take yourself off
take off
get out
get out of my sight
go
go your way
get going
get moving
move off
be off
set off
set out
start out
make a start
take your leave
decamp
duck out
take wing
walk out
walk off
absent yourself
be off with you!
shoo!
hit the road
fly
skedaddle
split
vamoose
scat
make yourself scarce
be on one's way
run along
beat it
get
get lost
push off
shove off
buzz off
clear off
skip off
pop off
go (and) jump in the lake
on your bike!
go and chase yourself!
get along
push along
get stuffed
sling your hook
hop it
hop the twig/stick
bog off
naff off
bug off
light out
haul off
haul ass
take a powder
hit the trail
take a hike
nick off
rack off
begone
avaunt
View 3 vulgar slang words
2.
vulgar slang

51 Word Meanings (from Thanks for the feedback) - 2022 Dec 26

Index of Word Meanings

1.
cagey

adjective informal
adjective: cagey;
comparative adjective: cagier;
superlative adjective: cagiest;
adjective: cagy

reluctant to give information owing to caution or suspicion.
"a spokesman was cagey about the arrangements his company had struck"

Similar:
secretive

guarded
non-committal
tight-lipped
reticent
cautious

---

wail

verb
past tense: wailed; past participle: wailed

utter a wail.
"Tina ran off wailing"

Similar:
howl

weep
cry
sob
moan
groan
keen
lament
yowl
blubber
snivel
whimper
whine
squall
bawl
shriek
scream
yelp
caterwaul
waul
complain
grumble
carp
sorrow
beat one's breast
greet
ululate

make a prolonged high-pitched sound.
"the wind wailed and buffeted the timber structure"

Similar:
howl

weep
cry
sob
moan
groan
keen
lament
yowl
blubber
snivel
whimper
whine
squall
bawl
shriek
scream
yelp
caterwaul
waul
complain
grumble
carp
sorrow
beat one's breast
greet
ululate
literary
manifest or feel deep sorrow for; lament.
"she wailed her wretched life"

---

sordid
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: sordid

1.
involving immoral or dishonourable actions and motives; arousing moral distaste and contempt.
"the story paints a sordid picture of bribes and scams"
h
Similar:
sleazy

seedy
seamy
unsavoury
shoddy
vile
foul
tawdry
louche
cheap
base
low
low-minded
debased
degenerate
corrupt
dishonest
dishonourable
disreputable
despicable
discreditable
contemptible
ignominious
ignoble
shameful
wretched
abhorrent
abominable
disgusting
sleazoid
h
Opposite:
high-minded
respectable
2.
dirty or squalid.
"the overcrowded housing conditions were sordid and degrading"
h
Similar:
dirty
filthy
mucky
grimy
muddy
grubby
shabby
messy
soiled
stained
smeared
smeary
scummy
slimy
sticky
sooty
dusty
unclean
foul
squalid
flea-bitten
slummy
cruddy
grungy
yucky
icky
crummy
scuzzy
manky
gungy
grotty
bogging
scungy
besmirched

h
Opposite:
immaculate

Origin
late Middle English (as a medical term in the sense ‘purulent’): from French sordide or Latin sordidus, from sordere ‘be dirty’. The current senses date from the early 17th century.
Tip
Similar-sounding words
sordid is sometimes confused with sorted

---

fleet2
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveliterary
comparative adjective: fleeter

fast and nimble in movement.
"a man of advancing years, but fleet of foot"
h
Similar:
nimble

agile
deft
lithe
limber
lissom
acrobatic
supple
light-footed
nimble-footed
light
light of foot
light on one's feet
spry
sprightly
lively
active
quick
quick-moving
fast
fast-moving
swift
swift-footed
rapid
speedy
brisk
smart
nippy
zippy
twinkle-toed
fleet-footed
fleet of foot
lightsome

h
Opposite:
lumbering

Origin
early 16th century: probably from Old Norse fljótr, of Germanic origin and related to fleet4.

---

rein
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: rein; plural noun: reins

a long, narrow strap attached at one end to a horse's bit, typically used in pairs to guide or check a horse in riding or driving.
British
a pair of straps used to restrain a young child.
"some of the children wore leather baby reins"
the power to direct and control.
"a new chairperson will soon take over the reins"

verb
verb: rein; 3rd person present: reins; past tense: reined; past participle: reined; gerund or present participle: reining

check or guide (a horse) by pulling on its reins.
"he reined in his horse and waited"
keep under control; restrain.
"with an effort, she reined back her impatience"
h
Similar:
restrain

check
curb
constrain
hold back
keep in check
keep under control
hold in
regulate
restrict
control
bridle
put the brakes on
slow down
curtail
limit
stop

arrest

Phrases
draw rein
stop one's horse. "he drew rein and waited for his friend to catch up"
free rein
freedom of action or expression. "he was given free rein to work out his designs"
keep a tight rein on
exercise strict control over. "her only chance of survival was to keep a tight rein on her feelings"
Origin
Middle English: from Old French rene, based on Latin retinere ‘retain’.
Tip
Similar-sounding words
rein is sometimes confused with reign

---

tiller

noun
noun: tiller; plural noun: tillers

a horizontal bar fitted to the head of a boat's rudder post and used for steering.

---

reindeer

noun
noun: reindeer; plural noun: reindeer; plural noun: reindeers

a deer of the tundra and subarctic regions of Eurasia and North America, both sexes of which have large branching antlers. Most Eurasian reindeer are domesticated and used for drawing sledges and as a source of milk, flesh, and hide.

Origin
late Middle English: from Old Norse hreindýri, from hreinn ‘reindeer’ + dýr ‘deer’.

---

chagrin
Learn to pronounce
verb
past participle: chagrined

feel distressed or humiliated.
"he was chagrined when his friend poured scorn on him"
h
Similar:
annoyed

irritated
cross
angry
vexed
exasperated
irked

---

hypocritical

saying that you have particular moral beliefs but behaving in a way that shows these are not sincere: Their accusations of corruption are hypocritical - they have been just as corrupt themselves. It's rather hypocritical of you, telling me not to shout.

---

10.

beguiling

interesting or attractive
/bɪˈɡaɪ.lɪŋ/ interesting or attractive, but perhaps not to be trusted: That's a beguiling argument, but I'm not convinced by it. Synonyms. alluring.

---

11.

shadow-box
verb
gerund or present participle: shadowboxing

spar with an imaginary opponent as a form of training.
"they shadow-boxed a bit to warm up"
make a show of tackling a problem or opponent while avoiding any direct engagement.
"they have shadow-boxed their way through all manner of policy disputes"

---

12.

disingenuous
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: disingenuous

not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
"he was being somewhat disingenuous as well as cynical"
h
Similar:
dishonest

deceitful
underhand
underhanded
duplicitous
double-dealing
two-faced
dissembling
insincere
false
lying
untruthful
mendacious
not candid
not frank
not entirely truthful
artful
cunning
crafty
wily
sly
sneaky
tricky
scheming
calculating
designing
devious
unscrupulous
shifty
foxy
economical with the truth
terminologically inexact
subtle
hollow-hearted
false-hearted
double-faced
truthless
unveracious
h
Opposite:
ingenuous

---

13.

inane
/ɪˈneɪn/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: inane

lacking sense or meaning; silly.
"don't badger people with inane questions"
h
Similar:
silly

foolish
stupid
fatuous
idiotic
absurd
ridiculous
ludicrous
laughable
risible
imbecilic
moronic
cretinous
unintelligent
witless
asinine
pointless
senseless
frivolous
nonsensical
brainless
mindless
thoughtless
vacuous
vapid
empty-headed
childish
puerile
infantile
jejune
dumb
dim
half-baked
damfool
daft
divvy
gormless
glaikit
dumb-ass
dof
h
Opposite:
intelligent

sensible

Origin
mid 16th century: from Latin inanis ‘empty, vain’.

---

14.

overbearing
/əʊvəˈbɛərɪŋ/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: overbearing

unpleasantly overpowering.
"an overbearing, ill-tempered brute"
h
Similar:
domineering

dominating
autocratic
tyrannical
despotic
heavy-handed
oppressive
high-handed
bullying
high and mighty
lordly
lording it
officious
masterful
dictatorial
bossy
imperious
pontifical
pompous
peremptory
arrogant
cocksure
proud
overproud
overweening
presumptuous
opinionated
dogmatic
pushy
throwing one's weight about
throwing one's weight around

cocky

overbear
/əʊvəˈbɛː/
Learn to pronounce
verb
gerund or present participle: overbearing

overcome by emotional pressure or physical force.
"his will had not been overborne by another's influence"

---

15.

upbeat
/ˈʌpbiːt/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: upbeat; plural noun: upbeats; noun: up-beat; plural noun: up-beats

(in music) an unaccented beat preceding an accented beat.

adjectiveinformal
adjective: upbeat; adjective: up-beat

cheerful; optimistic.
"he was upbeat about the company's future"
h
Similar:
optimistic

cheerful
cheery
positive
confident
hopeful

---

16.

hypercritical
/hʌɪpəˈkrɪtɪk(ə)l/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: hypercritical; adjective: hyper-critical

excessively and unreasonably critical, especially of small faults.
"he was a sarcastic, hypercritical man"
h
Similar:
carping

captious
overcritical
fault-finding
hair-splitting
cavilling
niggling
quibbling
pedantic
pettifogging
fussy
finicky
over-censorious
over-exacting
over-rigorous
over-particular
over-strict
picky
nitpicking
pass-remarkable
pernickety
persnickety
nice
overnice
h
Opposite:
easy-going

---

17.

quirky
/ˈkwəːki/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: quirky; comparative adjective: quirkier; superlative adjective: quirkiest

having or characterized by peculiar or unexpected traits or aspects.
"her sense of humour was decidedly quirky"
h
Similar:
eccentric

idiosyncratic
unconventional
unorthodox
unusual
off-centre
strange
bizarre
weird
peculiar
odd
freakish
outlandish
offbeat
out of the ordinary
Bohemian
alternative
zany
outré
wacky
freaky
kinky
way-out
far out
kooky
oddball
off the wall
in left field
bizarro
h
Opposite:

---

18.

bedhead
/ˈbɛdhɛd/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: bedhead; plural noun: bedheads; noun: bed-head; plural noun: bed-heads

1.
British
an upright board or panel fixed at the head of a bed.
2.
informal
hair with an untidy appearance, such as results from lying in bed.
"her artfully messy bedhead"

---

19.

crossed wires

: to fail to understand each other : to be confused because each person has a different idea about what is happening or being said. We got our wires crossed for a minute there—I thought you were asking me something else.

---

20.

uptight
/ˌʌpˈtʌɪt,ˈʌptʌɪt/
Learn to pronounce
adjectiveinformal
adjective: uptight

anxious or angry in a tense and overly controlled way.
"he is so uptight about everything"

---

21.

neurotic
/njʊəˈrɒtɪk/
Learn to pronounce
Filter definitions by topic
See definitions in:
all
medicine
psychiatry
adjectiveMedicine
adjective: neurotic

having, caused by, or relating to neurosis.
h
Similar:
mentally ill

mentally disturbed
mentally deranged
unstable
unbalanced
maladjusted
psychoneurotic
psychopathic
phobic
h
Opposite:
stable
well balanced

(in non-technical use) abnormally sensitive, obsessive, or anxious.
"he seemed a neurotic, self-obsessed character"
h
Similar:
overanxious

anxious
nervous
tense
highly strung
jumpy
oversensitive
paranoid
obsessive
compulsive
phobic
fixated
hysterical
overwrought
manic
irrational
nervy
twitchy
stressy
h
Opposite:
calm
laid-back

level-headed

noun
noun: neurotic; plural noun: neurotics

a neurotic person.
"I wasn't going to be labelled as a hypochondriac or neurotic"

---

22.

emulate
/ˈɛmjʊleɪt/
Learn to pronounce
verb
verb: emulate; 3rd person present: emulates; past tense: emulated; past participle: emulated; gerund or present participle: emulating

match or surpass (a person or achievement), typically by imitation.
"most rulers wished to emulate Alexander the Great"
h
Similar:
imitate

copy
reproduce
mimic
mirror
echo
follow
model oneself on
take as a model
take as an example
match
equal
parallel
be the equal of
be on a par with
be in the same league as
come near to
come close to
approximate
compete with
contend with
rival
vie with

surpass
imitate.
"hers is not a hairstyle I wish to emulate"
Computing
reproduce the function or action of (a different computer, software system, etc.).
"the adaptor is factory set to emulate a Hercules graphics board"

Origin
late 16th century: from Latin aemulat- ‘rivalled, equalled’, from the verb aemulari, from aemulus ‘rival’.

---

23.

unencumbered
/ˌʌnɪnˈkʌmbəd,ˌʌnɛnˈkʌmbəd/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: unencumbered

not having any burden or impediment.
"he needed to travel light and unencumbered"
free of debt or other financial liability.

---

24.

efarious
/nɪˈfɛːrɪəs/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: nefarious

(typically of an action or activity) wicked or criminal.
"the nefarious activities of the organized-crime syndicates"
h
Similar:
wicked

evil
sinful
iniquitous
villainous
criminal
heinous
atrocious
appalling
abhorrent
vile
foul
base
abominable
odious
depraved
corrupt
shameful
scandalous
monstrous
fiendish
diabolical
devilish
unholy
ungodly
infernal
satanic
dark
unspeakable
despicable
outrageous
shocking
disgraceful
knavish
dastardly
egregious
flagitious
h
Opposite:
good

admirable

Origin
mid 16th century: from Latin nefarius (from nefas, nefar- ‘wrong’, from ne- ‘not’ + fas ‘divine law’) + -ous.

---

25.

obligatory
/əˈblɪɡət(ə)ri/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: obligatory

required by a legal, moral, or other rule; compulsory.
"use of seat belts in cars is now obligatory"
h
Similar:
compulsory

mandatory
prescribed
required
demanded
statutory
enforced
binding
incumbent
requisite
necessary
imperative
unavoidable
inescapable
essential
h
Opposite:
voluntary
optional

(of a ruling) having binding force.
"a sovereign whose laws are obligatory"
often humorous
so customary or fashionable as to be expected of everyone or on every occasion.
"it was a quiet little street with the obligatory pub at the end"
h
Similar:
customary

traditional
usual
accustomed
routine
familiar
regular
habitual
de rigueur

wonted

Origin
late Middle English: from late Latin obligatorius, from Latin obligat- ‘obliged’, from the verb obligare (see oblige).

---

26.

wishy-washy
/ˈwɪʃɪˌwɒʃi/
adjective
adjective: wishy-washy

1.
(of drink or liquid food) weak; watery.
h
Similar:
watery

weak
watered down
thin
tasteless
flavourless
insipid
h
Opposite:
thick
flavoursome
2.
feeble or insipid in quality or character.
"a wishy-washy approach won't work"
h
Similar:
feeble
ineffectual
weak
vapid
milk-and-water
effete
spineless
limp
limp-wristed
namby-pamby
half-hearted
spiritless
irresolute
indecisive
wet
pathetic
weak-kneed
pale
insipid
pallid
wan
sickly
View 2 vulgar slang words
h
Opposite:
strong
firm

decisive

Origin
early 18th century: reduplication of washy.

---

27.

feeble
/ˈfiːbl/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: feeble; comparative adjective: feebler; superlative adjective: feeblest

lacking physical strength, especially as a result of age or illness.
"by now, he was too feeble to leave his room"
h
Similar:
weak

weakly
weakened
puny
wasted
frail
infirm
delicate
sickly
ailing
unwell
poorly
failing
helpless
powerless
impotent
enfeebled
enervated
debilitated
incapacitated
effete
decrepit
doddering
doddery
tottering
tottery
shaky
trembling
trembly
shilpit
etiolated
h
Opposite:
strong

(of a sound) faint.
"her feeble cries of pain"
h
Similar:
faint

dim
weak
pale
soft
subdued
muted
indistinct
unclear
vague
wishy-washy
h
Opposite:
strong
lacking strength of character.
"I know it's feeble but I've never been one to stand up for myself"
h
Similar:
cowardly
craven
faint-hearted
spineless
spiritless
lily-livered
chicken-livered
pigeon-hearted
timid
timorous
fearful
unassertive
soft
weak
ineffective
ineffectual
inefficient
incompetent
inadequate
indecisive
wishy-washy
wimpy
sissy
sissified
gutless
weak-kneed
yellow
yellow-bellied
chicken
wet
candy-assed
poor-spirited
View 1 vulgar slang word
h
Opposite:
brave
forceful
failing to convince or impress.
"a feeble excuse"
h
Similar:
ineffective
ineffectual
unsuccessful
inadequate
unconvincing
implausible
unsatisfactory
poor
weak
inept
tame
paltry
shallow
thin
flimsy
insubstantial
futile
useless
profitless
fruitless

h
Opposite:
effective

Origin
Middle English: from Old French fieble, earlier fleible, from Latin flebilis ‘lamentable’, from flere ‘weep’.

---

28.

burrow
/ˈbʌrəʊ/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: burrow; plural noun: burrows

a hole or tunnel dug by a small animal, especially a rabbit, as a dwelling.
h
Similar:
warren

tunnel
hole
lair
set
den
earth
retreat
excavation
cave
dugout
hollow

scrape

verb
verb: burrow; 3rd person present: burrows; past tense: burrowed; past participle: burrowed; gerund or present participle: burrowing

(of an animal) make a hole or tunnel, typically for use as a dwelling.
"moles burrowing away underground"
h
Similar:
tunnel

dig (out)
excavate
grub
mine
bore
drill
channel
hollow out
gouge out
scoop out
cut out

delve
dig into or through something solid.
"worms that burrow through dead wood"
hide underneath or press close to something.
"the child burrowed deeper into the bed"
make a thorough inquiry; investigate.
"they need to burrow into the heart of what's going on"

Origin
Middle English: variant of borough.

---

29.

snag1
/snaɡ/
Learn to pronounce
verb
past tense: snagged; past participle: snagged

1.
catch or tear (something) on a sharp projection.
"thorns snagged his sweater"
h
Similar:
tear

rip
gash
ladder

become caught on a sharp projection.
"radio aerials snagged on bushes and branches"
h
Similar:
catch (in)

hook
jag

get caught in/on
2.
informal•North American
catch or obtain.
"it's the first time they've snagged the star for a photo"

Origin
late 16th century (in snag1 (sense 2 of the noun)): probably of Scandinavian origin. The early sense ‘stump sticking out from a tree trunk’ gave rise to a US sense ‘submerged piece of timber obstructing navigation’, of which sense 1 is originally a figurative use. Current verb senses arose in the 19th century.

---

30.

bramble
/ˈbrambl/
Learn to pronounce
Filter definitions by topic
See definitions in:
all
plant
variety
noun
plural noun: brambles

a prickly scrambling shrub of the rose family, especially a blackberry.
British
the fruit of the blackberry.

verbBritish
3rd person present: brambles

gather blackberries.
"why don't we go brambling some day?"

Origin
Old English bræmbel, brǣmel, of Germanic origin; related to broom.

---

31.

smarting
/ˈsmɑːtɪŋ/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: smarting; plural noun: smartings

the fact or sensation of feeling a sharp stinging pain.
"ammonia can cause smarting of the eyes and breathing difficulties"

adjective
adjective: smarting

(of part of the body) feeling a sharp stinging pain.
"Susan rubbed her smarting eyes"

smart
/smɑːt/
Learn to pronounce
verb
gerund or present participle: smarting

(of a wound or part of the body) feel or cause a sharp stinging pain.
"her legs were scratched and smarting"
h
Similar:
sting

burn
tingle
prickle
hurt
ache

feel upset and annoyed.
"defence chiefs are still smarting from the government's cuts"
h
Similar:
feel annoyed

feel upset
feel offended
take offence
feel aggrieved
feel indignant
feel put out
feel hurt
feel wounded

feel resentful

Origin
Old English smeortan (verb), of West Germanic origin; related to German schmerzen ; the adjective is related to the verb, the original sense (late Old English) being ‘causing sharp pain’; from this arose ‘keen, brisk’, whence the current senses of ‘mentally sharp’ and ‘neat in a brisk, sharp style’.

---

32.

amenity
/əˈmiːnɪti,əˈmɛnɪti/
Learn to pronounce
noun
plural noun: amenities

a desirable or useful feature or facility of a building or place.
"the property is situated in a convenient location, close to all local amenities"
h
Similar:
facility

service
convenience
resource
utility
system
appliance
aid
advantage
comfort
benefit
arrangement
opportunity
equipment
provision
solutions
assistance

the pleasantness or attractiveness of a place.
"developments which would clash with amenity"
h
Similar:
pleasantness

agreeableness
pleasurableness
enjoyableness

niceness

Origin
late Middle English: from Old French amenite or Latin amoenitas, from amoenus ‘pleasant’.

---

33.

comport1
/kəmˈpɔːt/
verb
verb: comport; 3rd person present: comports; past tense: comported; past participle: comported; gerund or present participle: comporting

1.
formal
conduct oneself; behave.
"articulate students who comported themselves well in interviews"
h
Similar:
conduct oneself

acquit oneself
behave
act
perform

deport oneself
2.
US
accord or agree with.
"our outdated rules did not comport with 21st-century realities"

Origin
late Middle English (in the sense ‘tolerate’): from Latin comportare, from com- ‘together’ + portare ‘carry, bear’.
comport2
/ˈkɒmpɔːt/
noun
noun: comport; plural noun: comports

another term for compote (sense 2).

Origin
late 19th century: apparently an abbreviation of French comportier, variant of compotier ‘dessert dish’.

---

34.

inane
/ɪˈneɪn/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: inane

lacking sense or meaning; silly.
"don't badger people with inane questions"
h
Similar:
silly

foolish
stupid
fatuous
idiotic
absurd
ridiculous

---

35.

windbag
/ˈwɪn(d)baɡ/
noun
derogatory•informal
noun: windbag; plural noun: windbags

a person who talks at length but says little of any value.
"I think he's a pompous old windbag"

---

36.
c'est moi:

It's me
As no doubt many of you will know, c'est moi literally means 'It's me' but this translation doesn't really get to the heart of why people use it to respond to an expression of gratitude. In fact it is actually short for c'est moi qui vous remercie literally 'it's me who thanks you'.

---

37.

indignant
/ɪnˈdɪɡnənt/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: indignant

feeling or showing anger or annoyance at what is perceived as unfair treatment.
"he was indignant at being the object of suspicion"
h
Similar:
aggrieved

resentful
affronted
disgruntled
discontented
dissatisfied

---

38.

cheapskate

a miserly or stingy person
: a miserly or stingy person. especially : one who tries to avoid paying a fair share of costs or expenses.

---

39.

spendthrift
/ˈspɛn(d)θrɪft/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: spendthrift; plural noun: spendthrifts

a person who spends money in an extravagant, irresponsible way.
"Putt was a spendthrift and a heavy gambler"
h
Similar:
profligate

prodigal
squanderer
waster
big spender
wastrel
improvident
thriftless
wasteful
extravagant
free-spending
squandering
irresponsible
h
Opposite:
miser
skinflint
Scrooge
miserly
thrifty

frugal

Translate spendthrift to
Use over time for: spendthrift

---

40.

squabble
/ˈskwɒbl/
Learn to pronounce
noun
plural noun: squabbles

a noisy quarrel about something trivial.
"family squabbles"
h
Similar:
quarrel

row
argument
fight
contretemps
disagreement
difference of opinion
dissension
falling-out
dispute
disputation
contention
clash
altercation
shouting match
exchange
war of words
tussle
conflict
fracas
affray
wrangle
tangle
passage of/at arms
battle royal
donnybrook
tiff
set-to
run-in
shindig
shindy
stand-up
spat
scrap
dust-up
barney
slanging match
bunfight
ding-dong
bust-up
ruck
afters
rammy
rhubarb
broil
miff
threap
collieshangie

tracasserie(s)

verb
3rd person present: squabbles

quarrel noisily over a trivial matter.
"the boys were squabbling over a ball"
h
Similar:
quarrel

row
argue
bicker
have a row/fight
fight
fall out
disagree
fail to agree
differ
be at odds
have a misunderstanding
be at variance
have words
dispute
spar
wrangle
bandy words
cross swords
lock horns
be at each other's throats
be at loggerheads
scrap
go at it hammer and tongs
argufy
altercate
chop logic

threap

Origin
early 17th century: probably imitative; compare with Swedish dialect skvabbel ‘a dispute’.

---

41.

berate
/bɪˈreɪt/
Learn to pronounce
verb
3rd person present: berates

scold or criticize (someone) angrily.
"she berated herself for being fickle"
h
Similar:
rebuke

reprimand
reproach
reprove
admonish
remonstrate with
chastise
chide
upbraid
take to task
pull up
castigate
lambast
read someone the Riot Act
go on at
haul over the coals
criticize
censure
tell off
give someone a talking-to
give someone a telling-off
dress down
give someone a dressing-down
give someone an earful
give someone a roasting
give someone a rocket
give someone a rollicking
rap
rap over the knuckles
slap someone's wrist
let someone have it
bawl out
give someone hell
come down on
blow up at
pitch into
lay into
lace into
tear into
give someone a caning
put on the mat
slap down
blast
rag
keelhaul
tick off
have a go at
monster
carpet
give someone a carpeting
give someone a mouthful
tear someone off a strip
tear a strip off someone
give someone what for
give someone some stick
wig
give someone a wigging
give someone a row
row
chew out
ream out
take to the woodshed
call down
rate
give someone a rating
trim
reprehend
objurgate
View 8 vulgar slang words

h
Opposite:
praise

Origin
mid 16th century: from be- ‘thoroughly’ + rate2.

---

42.

incredulous
/ɪnˈkrɛdjʊləs/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: incredulous

(of a person or their manner) unwilling or unable to believe something.
"an incredulous gasp"
h
Similar:
disbelieving

unbelieving
doubtful
dubious
unconvinced
distrustful
distrusting
mistrustful
mistrusting
suspicious
questioning
lacking trust
cynical
sceptical
wary
chary

h
Opposite:
credulous

Origin
16th century: from Latin incredulus (from in- ‘not’ + credulus ‘believing, trusting’, from credere ‘believe’) + -ous.

---

43.

perfunctory
/pəˈfʌŋ(k)t(ə)ri/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: perfunctory

(of an action) carried out without real interest, feeling, or effort.
"he gave a perfunctory nod"
h
Similar:
cursory

desultory
quick
brief
hasty
hurried
rapid
passing
fleeting
summary
token
casual
superficial
uninterested
careless
half-hearted
unthinking
sketchy
mechanical
automatic
routine
offhand
indifferent
inattentive
dismissive
h
Opposite:
careful

thorough

Origin
late 16th century: from late Latin perfunctorius ‘careless’, from Latin perfunct- ‘done with, discharged’, from the verb perfungi .

---

44.

keel1
/kiːl/
Learn to pronounce
Filter definitions by topic
See definitions in:
all
nautical
biology
noun
noun: keel; plural noun: keels

1.
the lengthwise timber or steel structure along the base of a ship, supporting the framework of the whole, in some vessels extended downwards as a ridge to increase stability.
h
Similar:
base

bottom
bottom side

underside
literary
a ship.
"to buy a new keel with my gold, And fill her with such things as she may hold"
2.
Zoology
a ridge along the breastbone of many birds to which the flight muscles are attached; the carina.
3.
Botany
a prow-shaped pair of petals present in flowers of the pea family.

verb
verb: keel; 3rd person present: keels; past tense: keeled; past participle: keeled; gerund or present participle: keeling

(of a boat or ship) turn over on its side; capsize.
"it's going to take more wind to make this boat keel over"
h
Similar:
capsize

turn turtle
turn upside down
turn topsy-turvy
founder
list
heel over
lean over
overbalance
topple over
overturn
turn over
tip over
fall over
cowp

informal
(of a person or thing) fall over; collapse.
"a wardrobe was about to keel over on top of him"
h
Similar:
collapse

faint
fall down in a faint
pass out
black out
lose consciousness

swoon

Origin
Middle English: from Old Norse kjǫlr, of Germanic origin.

---

45.

muffled
/ˈmʌfld/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: muffled

(of a sound) not loud because of being obstructed in some way; muted.
"they heard the sounds of muffled voices"

muffle
/ˈmʌfl/
Learn to pronounce
verb
past tense: muffled; past participle: muffled

1.
wrap or cover for warmth.
"everyone was muffled up in coats and scarves"
h
Similar:
wrap

wrap up
swathe
swaddle
enfold
envelop
cloak
cover up
2.
cover or wrap up (a source of sound) to reduce its loudness.
"the soft beat of a muffled drum"

make (a sound) quieter or less distinct.
"his voice was muffled"
h
Similar:
deaden

dull
dampen
damp down
mute
soften
hush
silence
still
tone down
mask
stifle
smother
subdue
suppress
gag
muzzle
quieten
quiet
indistinct
faint
muted
dim
soft
strangled
stifled
smothered
suppressed
h
Opposite:
loud

clear

Origin
late Middle English (as a verb): perhaps a shortening of Old French enmoufler ; the noun (mid 17th century) from Old French moufle ‘thick glove’.

---

46.

extol
/ɪkˈstəʊl,ɛkˈstəʊl/
Learn to pronounce
verb
verb: extol; 3rd person present: extols; past tense: extolled; past participle: extolled; gerund or present participle: extolling

praise enthusiastically.
"he extolled the virtues of the Russian peoples"
h
Similar:
praise enthusiastically

go into raptures about/over
wax lyrical about
sing the praises of
praise to the skies
heap praise on
eulogize
rhapsodize over
rave about
enthuse about/over
gush about/over
throw bouquets at
express delight over
acclaim
go wild about
be mad about
go on about
big someone/something up
ballyhoo
cry someone/something up
laud
panegyrize

h
Opposite:
criticize

Origin
late Middle English: from Latin extollere, from ex- ‘out, upward’ + tollere ‘raise’.

---

47.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases.

---

48.

callous
/ˈkaləs/
Learn to pronounce
See definitions in:
all
medicine
botany
adjective
adjective: callous

showing or having an insensitive and cruel disregard for others.
"his callous comments about the murder made me shiver"
h
Similar:
heartless

unfeeling
uncaring
cold
cold-hearted
hard
as hard as nails
hard-hearted
with a heart of stone
stony-hearted
insensitive
lacking compassion
hard-bitten
cold-blooded
hardened
case-hardened
harsh
cruel
ruthless
brutal
unsympathetic
uncharitable
indifferent
unconcerned
unsusceptible
insensible
bloodless
soulless
hard-boiled
indurate
indurated
marble-hearted
h
Opposite:
kind

compassionate

noun
noun: callous; plural noun: callouses

variant spelling of callus.

Origin
late Middle English (in the Latin sense): from Latin callosus ‘hard-skinned’.

---

49.

apoplectic
/ˌapəˈplɛktɪk/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: apoplectic

1.
informal
overcome with anger; furious.
"Mark was apoplectic with rage at the decision"
h
Similar:
furious

enraged
overcome with anger
infuriated
in a temper
incensed
raging
incandescent
wrathful
fuming
ranting
raving
seething
frenzied
in a frenzy
beside oneself
outraged
in high dudgeon
as cross as two sticks
mad
hopping mad
wild
livid
boiling
aerated
with all guns blazing
foaming at the mouth

fit to be tied
2.
dated
relating to or denoting apoplexy (stroke).
"an apoplectic attack"

Origin
early 17th century: from French apoplectique or late Latin apoplecticus, from Greek apoplēktikos, from apoplēssein ‘disable by a stroke’.

---

50.

swing a cat without hitting one:

you can't swing a dead cat without hitting (someone or something)
Used to emphasize that a particular type of person or thing is so numerous as to be unavoidable.

---

51.

tenacious
/tɪˈneɪʃəs/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: tenacious

tending to keep a firm hold of something; clinging or adhering closely.
"a tenacious grip"
h
Similar:
firm

tight
fast
clinging
strong
forceful
powerful
unshakeable
immovable
iron
sticky
adhesive
gluey
gummy
glutinous
viscid
viscous
mucilaginous
claggy
clarty
h
Opposite:
loose
weak

not readily relinquishing a position, principle, or course of action; determined.
"this tenacious defence of local liberties"
h
Similar:
retentive

good
photographic
persisting in existence; not easily dispelled.
"a tenacious local legend"
h
Similar:
persevering
persistent
pertinacious
determined
dogged

Friday, January 20, 2023

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Negotiate in Three Dimensions

WHY ARE WE BORN with two eyes?

One reason, of course, is redundancy: it’s good to have a backup, in case we lose an eye to an accident or illness.
But there’s another consideration. Having two eyes is different from having, say, two kidneys, or two lungs.
Having two eyes gives us the extraordinary ability to see the world in three dimensions. Yes, it’s certainly possible to get along in the world with only one eye—and many people do—but “binocular” vision gives us the enormous advantage of depth perception. When seen with two eyes rather than one, a formerly flat world acquires all kinds of useful complexity.
This is a book about seeing the world in three dimensions. More specifically, it’s about learning to negotiate in ways that recognize—and take advantage of —the rich complexities of human interactions. We call our approach 3-D Negotiation because it draws on three distinct dimensions to achieve great outcomes. But before getting into the specifics of our approach, let’s look at the alternative, which we’ll refer to as one-dimensional negotiation.

Negotiating in One Dimension

There are many kinds of one-dimensional negotiators; in fact, the world is full of them. But most fall into one of two broad categories, which for the purposes of this overview chapter we’ll call “win-lose” and “win-win” negotiators. Whether you’re a pro or a novice, you’ll instantly recognize these two types. They offer competingseminars. They do battle in academic journals. And in many cases, they engage at the table.
Win-lose bargainers are from the old school, although you can certainly still find plenty of them plying their trade in the boardrooms, town hall basements, rented conference facilities, and the other venues where negotiations take place. Their bookshelves bulge with manuals on adversarial ploys, such as Robert J. Ringer’s Winning Through Intimidation and Jim Camp’s Start with No. They battle and scrap for the best price, the biggest share of the pie, and so on. They sit down at the bargaining table intending to walk away not only with their share of the goodies, but most of yours, too.
Win-win negotiators, by contrast, have for some time now represented the new way. They promise innovative solutions, more value, and better relationships. The win- win library consists of books that emphasize the cooperative potential of negotiation, including valuable 1 ones like Getting to Yes and Getting Past No. Win-win types don’t sit around cooking up unilateral ways to get more than their fair share at the table; they’d rather engage in joint brainstorming sessions to come up with creative solutions that “make the pie bigger” for all.
Experience has probably given you an intuitive feel for the pluses and minuses inherent in each approach. Yes, the aggressive win-lose negotiator gets a better deal some of the time. But he or she may damage relationships in the process, may overlook more creative agreements, and may even precipitate a deadlock, thereby causing promising discussions to break down unnecessarily. (Although, as we will emphasize in later chapters, some discussions deserve to break down.) The earnest win-win player may be more focused on creativity—and almost certainly has more friends—but may come up short in tough encounters. It’s a trade-off,and not always a beneficial one. In the name of long- term relationships, naive win-win negotiators may give up achievable gains in the here and now.
So win-lose and win-win negotiators couldn’t be more different, right? Well, no. In fact, we see them as being very similar in a fundamental way: they are both one- dimensional negotiators. They both concentrate almost exclusively on the face-to-face and tactical aspects of negotiation. They view the negotiating process mainly in terms of actions at the bargaining table, which of course comprises not only the conference room, but virtual tables (phone, fax, e-mail, etc.).
Negotiating advice from both camps focuses mainly on how best to deal directly with the other side. From the win-lose side of the house, this means tips on how to size up your opponent’s weak spots; who should make the first offer; how much to demand; how to persuasively overcome objections, decipher body language, and threaten to walk away; and how to profit from various ploys—the “powerless agent” story, the “good cop, bad cop” routine, and so on.
Meanwhile, the win-win playbook shows how to build trust, communicate clearly, probe for real interests behind bargaining positions, brainstorm new options, avoid cross-cultural gaffes, and successfully counter the ploys used by their hardball counterparts. But note again that the focus is on the tactical. The players are predetermined, the chess board is set up; all that remains is for the game to be played there and then, whatever the choice of approaches may be.
In our experience, most people consider negotiations to be one or the other of these approaches, or a blend of the two. And obviously, win-win negotiators and their win-lose counterparts do more than interact at the table; they also prepare before they get there. But mainly, theyprepare by planning their face-to-face approach and tactics. Take a look, for example, at the many negotiation seminars offered by the venerable American Management Association, which are mostly listed under the category “Communication and Interpersonal Skills”: Negotiating is what happens at the table. It is about tactics and dealing directly with the other side.
Years of doing deals and analyzing negotiations have persuaded us that this apparently commonsense focus on the table often fails. It routinely misses the larger potential game that can really drive the outcome. Even if they don’t recognize it or acknowledge it, one- dimensional negotiators are actually playing in a 3-D world, and they often pay a steep price for their very limited approach. They, or the people whom they represent, are the losers.

The 3-D Negotiation Alternative

So what is this larger 3-D game? Like any good bargainer, a 3-D Negotiator must master the tactical, at- the-table, face-to-face techniques that rely on effective communications and interpersonal skills. But as we’ve said, 3-D Negotiation involves not one, but three dimensions, all of which are in play more or less concurrently throughout an effective negotiation. The three dimensions are:

1. Tactics

2. Deal design

3. Setup

By now, you’ve already got a sense of tactics—at least of the win-win and win-lose kind. The second dimension, deal design, will likely be somewhat familiar to you as we begin to shift our focus away from one-dimensional moves at the table. So let’s look at deal design before getting into our much less well-understood—and most powerful—third dimension.

The 3-D Focus on Deal Design

Here is deal design in a nutshell: negotiation involves the art and science of drawing up deals that create lasting value. Deal design employs a good old-fashioned tool—the drawing board—in new and productive ways.
This is where the win-lose negotiator, in particular, comes up short. In the win-lose mind-set, the broad outlines of the deal are self-evident. So the core challenge of negotiating lies in choosing the best tactics to win— the best price, the most generous terms, or whatever.
Here’s what we mean by a systematic approach to deal design: when a proposed deal does not offer enough value to all sides, or when its structure won’t achieve its purposes, deal designers must go to work on the drawing board, sometimes on your own, sometimes with your team, and sometimes in concert with the other party.
Their deal designs create value, often unexpectedly, guided by general principles and specific techniques.

Maybe we need to make a definitional aside as we introduce this term. “Back to the drawing board” sometimes has a negative connotation—that is, scrapping a failed project and having to start over—that we don’t intend. Rather, we use the drawing-board metaphor to invoke notions of creativity, invention, and fresh thinking guided by potent underlying deal-design principles.
Smart people working at the drawing board can sometimes discover hidden sources of economic and noneconomic value, then craft agreements—design deals —that unlock that value for the parties involved. For example: Is it really a pure price deal? Does some sort of trade between sides make sense and, if so, on what terms? Can we unbundle different aspects of what looks like a single issue and give to each side what it values most? Should it be a staged agreement, perhaps withcontingencies and risk-sharing provisions? If there’s a contract involved, should it be an unusual kind of contract—one with a more creative concept and structure than we’ve used before? One that meets ego needs as well as economic ones?

A Few Deal-Design Examples

Conventional wisdom says that we negotiate to overcome the differences that divide us. So, typically, we’re advised to find win-win agreements by searching for common ground. While identifying common ground almost always helps, many of the most frequently overlooked sources of value in agreement arise from differences among the parties. Deal-design principles can systematically point to agreements that create value by dovetailing differences.
For example, when Egypt and Israel were negotiating over the Sinai, their positions on where to draw the boundary were incompatible. When negotiators went beyond the opposing positions, however, they uncovered a vital difference of underlying interest and priority: the Israelis cared more about security, while the Egyptians cared more about sovereignty. The solution was a demilitarized zone under the Egyptian flag.
Differences of interest or priority can open the door to unbundling different elements and giving each party what it values the most at the least cost to the other (as the Egyptians and Israelis did): a core principle of deal design. A good win-win negotiator may well come up with such creative agreements through focusing on interests, not positions, and brainstorming options. The distinctive contribution of deal design, however, is to crystallize and much more systematically develop the 2 underlying principles.Let’s look at an example of another kind of difference, focusing on how divergent forecasts can fuel joint gains.
Suppose an entrepreneur who is genuinely optimistic about the prospects of her fast-growing electronics- components company faces a potential buyer who likes the company but is much more skeptical than the entrepreneur/owner about the company’s future cash flow. They negotiate in good faith, but at the end of the day, the two sides sharply disagree on the likely future of the company and so cannot find an acceptable sale price.
Instead of seeing these different forecasts as a barrier, a savvy deal designer would perceive opportunities to bridge the “value gap.” One option would be a deal in which the buyer pays a fixed amount now and a contingent amount later, with the latter amount determined by the future performance of the company.
Properly structured, with adequate incentives and monitoring mechanisms, such a contingent payment (or “earn-out”) can appear quite valuable to the optimistic seller—who expects to get that earn-out—but not very costly to the less optimistic buyer. The seller’s willingness to accept such a contingent deal, moreover, may give the buyer the confidence he or she needs to go through with the deal. The two-step payment process may make the deal sufficiently attractive to both parties —and more attractive than walking away.
As we will demonstrate in later chapters, a host of other differences make up the raw material that skilled deal designers transform into joint gains. For example, a less risk-averse party can “insure” a more risk-averse one. A more impatient party can get more of the early money, while his more patient counterpart can get considerably more over a longer period. Differences in cost or revenue structure, tax status, or regulatory arrangements between two parties can be converted into gains for both. If one party mainly cares about how a deal looks to a key constituency, while the other focuses onsubstance, the right deal design can create value for both.
Indeed, for a savvy deal designer, conducting a disciplined “differences inventory” is at least as important a task as identifying areas of common ground.
By now, you should be getting a better sense of what we mean by the second dimension in our 3-D scheme: deal design on the drawing board. While our first dimension, tactics, focuses mainly on the interpersonal process at the table, deal design shifts toward substance and outcomes, often significantly away from the table itself.

The 3-D Focus on Setup

The third dimension, setup moves—often the most potent actions a 3-D Negotiator can take—completes the shift in focus. These moves take place entirely away from the table. In a nutshell, here is what we mean by setup: negotiation involves moves away from the table to set up the most promising situation once you’re at the table. Before taking a seat at the table, the 3-D
Negotiator has taken advantage of powerful negotiation principles—carefully developed in later chapters—to create the optimum conditions before the parties face each other directly. In other words, the table has been set well before the tactical interplay (the focus of win-win and win-lose negotiators) begins.
What does “setting the table” mean in this context? Simply put, it means acting to ensure that the right parties have been involved, in the right sequence, to deal with the right issues that engage the right set of interests, at the right table or tables, at the right time, under the right expectations, and facing the right consequences of walking away if there is no deal. Before worrying too much about tactics, the 3-D setup architect works hard to optimize these elements—the scope, sequence, and choices about the process itself—within which interpersonal dealing will play out.If the setup at the table isn’t promising, the 3-D Negotiator doesn’t merely resort to bullying (like the win-lose type) or turning up the empathy and personal charm (like the win-win negotiator). Instead, he or she takes action away from the table to reset the table more favorably. The 3-D Negotiator understands that a bad setup makes tactics at the table more or less irrelevant— and that a great setup, conversely, makes good tactics all the more effective. In fact, it can help the tactician achieve otherwise impossible results.

Financing Staples: Getting the Scope and Sequence Right

The 3-D Negotiator pays careful attention to optimizing the scope (the parties, interests, no-deal options) and sequence by which different potential parties are involved in order to create the most promising possible setup. Let’s look at an interesting case to give you a clear illustration of what we mean by a better setup.
The case involves Thomas Stemberg, the founder of 3 Staples, the original big-box office supply store. Thanks to a first round of financing received from Stemberg’s initial venture capital (VC) backers, the Staples concept— rock-bottom prices on office supplies for small businesses—appeared increasingly compelling, beating early sales targets by 50 percent. With these positive early results in hand, and with the threat of new competitors like Office Depot jumping into the market that Staples had started to create, Stemberg urgently needed expansion capital. Logically enough, he went back to the same well: the venture capitalists that had helped get Staples off the ground in the first place.
But during the hunt for second-round financing, the question of valuation emerged as a potential stumbling block. From Staples’s side of the table, it appeared that the VCs were closing ranks, stonewalling Stemberg, and refusing to value Staples as highly as he’d hoped. Not anovel tactic, certainly—offering less capital while demanding a bigger piece of Staples’s equity—but surprising in its monolithic nature. No matter where he went in the venture capital community, Stemberg heard more or less the same thing.
So what was the best negotiating stance for Stemberg to adopt at this point, to (in his words) “break the venture capitalist cartel”? Was the answer to be found in being a better tactician at the conference table? If so, should Stemberg concentrate on being a better win-lose negotiator of the old school? In other words, should he try harder to unflinchingly look the bankers in the eye or decipher their body language? Should he resolve to lock everyone in a room until the positive result he was looking for finally emerged? Should he just say “no”? Refuse to budge? Wear them down until he wore them out? Or, alternatively, should he resolve to be a more effective win-win player? That is, should he listen actively? Brainstorm options? Focus on what would be fair? In a word, no—on all counts. From the 3-D Negotiator’s perspective, the best way to deal with this hardball stance was not to focus on tactics and process at the table. Instead, we would argue, Stemberg needed a more promising setup, involving the right new parties and interests, that would be more receptive to the particular deal he was seeking.
Going out to generate a better financing offer would be a good move here, in line with standard negotiation advice. And Stemberg did just that. He initiated conversations with Goldman Sachs: an investment bank, rather than a venture capital firm. After talking to its venture contacts, however, Goldman initially proposed exactly the same valuation as the VCs. Rather than weakening, it appeared that the “cartel” was broadening.
Now what?In a case like this, a good 3-D Negotiator would routinely ask a series of questions (we’ll develop these for you later) in order to generate a more promising setup.
Here’s one such line of questioning: “Who are the potential ‘high-value players’ here? What parties are not now involved who might value this agreement more highly than those in the current setup?”

To answer these questions—to overcome the cartel he perceived—Stemberg visited Harvard Business School and sought out one of our colleagues, Professor Bill Sahlman, who is an expert on venture firms and the financing of entrepreneurial start-ups. Stemberg asked: “How do you break this?” Sahlman’s answer: “Go directly to the institutions: the pension funds and insurance companies . . . They may be limited partners of the venture capital firms, but they often resent handing off 20 percent of the profits and a hefty management fee, instead of keeping it themselves.”

To a 3-D Negotiator in Stemberg’s case, these institutions were potential “high-value players.” If brought directly into the deal, they would see 20-plus percent higher returns than if they invested indirectly through venture capital partnerships. By following this advice, Stemberg found his funding options greatly expanded, as several limited partners of the venture funds offered to put up their own money at Stemberg’s price.
Meanwhile, who else might be a high-value player, for different reasons? Stemberg decided that he should also make an appeal to high-net-worth individuals with independent perspectives who might support a higher valuation than the VCs. For example, he approached Marty Trust, head of Mast Industries, whose office was literally across the street from Staples’s second store.
Trust could see Staples’s remarkable results for himself.
He had the retailing background to recognize itspotential. And he understood that Stemberg had to act fast, since clone competitors like Office Depot were opening stores like mad. As Stemberg later recalled,
“When [Marty Trust] said he wanted 10 percent of the company, we’d say, ‘Fine, that’ll be $3 million.’ And he’d say ‘Fine’—and like magic, the company had a value.”
Does this story surprise you as an example of 3-D Negotiation? Didn’t the negotiations with the venture capitalists break down? Is that an example of successful negotiations? “Yes” to both of those last two questions. This is an example of exactly how 3-D Negotiators think. How so? Because Stemberg didn’t rely on face-to-face tactics to change the minds of his initial backers, whom he considered to be overly greedy. (That would have been standard, one-dimensional kind of thinking.) Instead, he changed the scope of the negotiation (the parties, their interests, the no-deal options). He favorably reset the table with right new parties whose interests were far more aligned with the deal he wanted to do. And, as we’ll see, he then sequenced the process.

Now, the generic advice in this particular story—that is, to shop around for other options—is pretty standard and pretty good guidance, and it should hardly surprise you. Yet if Stemberg had spent his time indiscriminately pitching other investment bankers, commercial bankers, or many other potential capital sources, he would likely have come up empty-handed, while burning up precious time. Why? Because although these were alternatives to the VCs, in practical terms, they were not the right players.
By applying the principles of 3-D Negotiation in a systematic, disciplined way, you can learn to zero in on potential high-value players—those parties not now involved who might value a desired agreement morehighly than those in the current setup—and thereby achieve a better setup, and a better outcome. In the Staples case, the right players were the high-value ones; in other cases, we’ll show you how other kinds of players are the right ones to enhance the setup. Examples would include direct or indirect influence, a key role in deal approval or implementation, and so on.
The setup also improved in other ways as a result of Stemberg’s away-from-the-table moves. Even as he went out to the new sources suggested by Sahlman and pushed Goldman Sachs to sweeten its offer, Stemberg continued negotiating with the venture firms—but with better options in case the VCs ultimately said “no.” Meanwhile, of course, Stemberg’s effective maneuvers sharply worsened the VCs’ no-deal options. When he went back to his first-round backers, he was able to present alarming news to them. Not only were they now in the unaccustomed role of middlemen—at risk of being cut out by their own limited partners—but it began to look like they might be crowded out altogether as other investors piled in. “This thing’s filling up fast,” Stemberg declared flatly. “Do you guys want to play or not?”
It worked . . . on his terms. Despite its tough aspects,
Stemberg’s approach did not rupture relationships with his venture investors; for example, Bain’s Mitt Romney served on the Staples board for years. And the ultimate success of his table-resetting effort would also have a beneficial impact the next time he approached potential financial backers. (Hey, guys—I’ve already proven I can get the money somewhere else. Do you want to play more reasonably or not?) Of course, there’s a lot more to getting the right scope (parties, interests, no-deal options) and sequence than we’ve included here. But you get the general idea. Don’t just focus on tactics at the table; be sure the setup isright. If you don’t like the way the table is set, reset it by attacking the scope and sequence of the negotiations.

Creating and Claiming Value

Let’s back up a step and ask a fundamental question whose answer underlies our approach: whether we act in one, two, or three dimensions, what are we actually trying to do by negotiating? On one level, everyone will answer this question differently, depending on the specifics of the negotiations at hand. (On this level, Tom Stemberg would have said, “The point of negotiating is to get the money I need quickly and on terms that I consider fair.”) But on a deeper level, the answer to our rhetorical question is always the same: Your negotiating objective should be to create and claim value for the long term by crafting and implementing a deal that is satisfactory for both (or all) parties.
What is value? Of course, many negotiations center on economic value—that is, potential financial gains to the negotiating parties. Suppose that we own a patent that could dramatically boost the value of your products in a market segment in which our firm has no interest in competing. A licensing deal could create economic value for both of us and would certainly be more appealing than the no-deal alternative.
But value can—and in many cases, should—be understood more broadly. Think of the example of Egypt and Israel negotiating over the Sinai described earlier.
Rather than a zero-sum battle over where to draw a line in the sand, they came up with a demilitarized zone under the Egyptian flag; the kinds of value they created were not mainly economic, but involving security for the Israelis and sovereignty for the Egyptians. The idea of value can go farther still; as long as one or more parties care strongly about some aspect of the process or outcome, that aspect is a potential source of value in the negotiation. So, yes, “value” can mean a discounted cashflow. But it can also mean precedent, relationships, reputation, political appearance, fairness, or even how the other side’s self-image fares in the process. The 3-D
Negotiator is a master at the kinds of cooperative, problem-solving skills that uncover joint gains, and thereby create value for all sides relative to no deal.
Value-creation falls into the “win-win,” or “non-zero- sum” aspect of the process, because value creation benefits all parties.
But that’s only half the story. The 3-D Negotiator is also a master at claiming value. This is the competitive, win-lose part of the negotiation, in which one side seeks to claim a full share of the “value pie.” Obviously, there’s an inherent tension between the cooperative moves needed to create value jointly and the competitive moves that enable you claim value individually. Managing that tension is at the very heart of the art and science of negotiation. When those contradictory tugs are badly managed, things tend to break down quickly. Hardball moves to claim value can short-circuit the moves needed to create value. Impasses arise unnecessarily, and money gets left on the table. The 3-D Negotiation techniques described throughout this book will help you solve all three of these challenges. They will help you create value, claim value, and productively manage the tension between creating and claiming.
There’s one more point to make here: negotiators need to think in the long term when creating and claiming value. Yes, there are many kinds of one-shot negotiations after which it is highly unlikely that the two parties will ever sit down to bargain together again. Most likely, you will only sell your company once. If you sell a series of houses or used cars over your lifetime, you’ll almost certainly be dealing with a different individual each time.

These are important deals, and in the following chapters we will offer you a great deal of advice for managing one-shot negotiations, which—by definition—don’t require a long-term perspective.

But in negotiations that aren’t one-shots, keeping the long term in mind when creating and claiming value is important for at least three reasons. First, many negotiations are only a single chapter in a larger, ongoing relationship that could be damaged by adversarial tactics, making it harder to strike good deals in the future. Second, many agreements deliver their value only when all parties live up to their respective sides of the bargain in the intended spirit. If parties to the agreement feel that they have been exploited or otherwise dealt with unfairly, they may live up to their side of the bargain only halfheartedly—or they may even repudiate the agreement. Third, even in the case of a true one-shot, stand-alone agreement, your approach to deal making can affect your reputation beyond the confines of that one deal. The business and personal networks within which we all interact are becoming ever more tightly connected. People talk. If you get a reputation for dealing unfairly or adversarially, it may come back to haunt you.
We stress the overall negotiating objective—to create and claim value for the long term—since this objective directly informs both how you perform a 3-D barriers audit and how you craft a 3-D strategy to overcome the barriers you’ve identified. As we analyze what is difficult about a given negotiation, we will often ask two more precise questions: What are the barriers to creating value? What are the barriers to claiming value? Similarly, in talking about crafting a 3-D strategy, we will focus on the setup, deal design, and tactical moves that will:

(1) create the maximum possible value, and
(2) claim a full share of that value—on a long-term basis.

Not One Dimension, but Three Dimensions

To summarize, the 3-D Negotiator plays a more complete game than either the old school win-lose negotiator, the trendy win-win negotiator, or their many close cousins who cluster around the bargaining table. That’s why we’ve come to use the metaphor of “dimensions” to describe the three different—and mutually reinforcing— classes of negotiating moves that comprise the 3-D
Negotiator’s arsenal: tactics, deal design, and setup.
Table 1-1 summarizes each of our three dimensions. By putting these pieces together, this book will show you precisely what it means to be a 3-D Negotiator, playing the whole negotiating game rather than just the at-the- table part of it.
A final word: in most negotiations, the stakes are high.
This is true whether you’re trying to secure second-round financing, broker a peace between warring states, or close a key business deal. True, these are very different negotiating contexts, with very different sorts of things hanging in the balance: lives, profits, individual dreams.
But in all of them, the people at the table care very deeply about the outcome of the bargaining process.
Unfortunately, when it comes to negotiating success, caring deeply doesn’t make the difference. Only effective preparation and focused action make the difference— and in our experience, the best preparation is mastering the principles of 3-D Negotiation. The very first part of preparation is understanding what you’re really up against. To us, that means the barriers that stand between you and the deal you want. Diagnosing those barriers is our next order of business.

TABLE 1-1 Individual dimensions that make up an overall 3-D approach

Ref: Chapter 1 from the book "3-D Negotiation" by James Sebenius