ABSTRACT
Priming can have an unconscious impact on events, on relationships, on trust building, and on the trajectory of our conversations. John Bargh discovered in his study on the effects of hot and cold coffee that simply holding one or the other before having a conversation actually triggers different parts of the brain to light up. Bargh also did experiments with hard and soft chairs, with similar results—soft chairs made conversations easier and hard chairs made them stiffer. Disengagement is a healthy negotiation tactic that can improve the conversation and that also quells the amygdala and other fear centers. Psychologists have long noted the importance of warm physical contact between caregivers and children in the children’s ability to develop healthy relationships as adults, so Bargh and his research partner, Lawrence E. Williams, decided to test the impact of warmth on the perceptions of adults.
