Leadership Lesson from Wobbly Furniture

Subliminal Leadership

The relentless advance of technology and research methodologies is accelerating our understanding of ourselves and constricting the domain of free will (more). The article, “Tall, Dark and Stable” (The Economist, July 14,2012 edition), reports the work of David Kille, Amanda Forest and Joanne Wood (University of Waterloo) finding that “the stability of chairs and tables has an effect on perceptions and desires.”

People sitting on wobbly chairs or at wobbly tables will tend to:

• See instability in the emotional aspects of people, relationships and other social events
• Value stability in their own relationships, friends and acquaintances

This is in line with research finding that:

• Giving someone an icy drink at a party leads him to believe he is getting the cold shoulder from fellow guests
• Handing over a warm drink gives people a sense of warmth from others
• Putting potential voters in chairs which lean slightly to the left causes them to become more agreeable towards policies associated with the left of the political spectrum
• Standing next to a bottle of hand sanitizer makes us more conservative

Within this blog, we’ve learned that how we feel about our bodies influences our decisions. How smells and testosterone levels can influence our judgments. How style influences our evaluation of content, rudeness influences evaluations of power and eloquence influences evaluations of honesty.

Beauty even affects us subliminally. Women in red influences men’s ratings of attractiveness and pretty women cause men to take more risk. Vanity sizing encourages clothing purchases. Consumer psychology (more) finds ways to make products more attractive. Even stories change the taste of food and single words impact our moods.

Yes, all are such little things. Yet, we often ignore them and then wonder why our initiatives aren’t as successful as they could be.

Related posts:

• Protection from the Power of Subliminal Smells
• Body – Emotion Connection: People Are Very Different
• Correlation: High Testosterone and Poor Risk Assessment
• Placebo Management (Pt 3): Stories Change Taste
• Change Management – Tactic #7: Setting the Mood