Michele Gelfand: evaluation

Transcript context

…And why? De Tocqueville really noticed this as an American trait years ago, that Americans seem to be pretty impatient. We live in a context. An undervalued, underrated concept in psychology is metaphor. We live in a context where sports metaphors, game metaphors, are really guiding a lot of interaction in general but also in negotiation. In those contexts, the clock is ticking. People feel like they have to get things done quickly. That’s where the impatience comes from. It comes from certain metaphors. When you’re in a relationship metaphor, the clock is not ticking. The relationship metaphor is much more common in places like East Asia or the Middle East, where reputation building and understanding one’s honor and building trust is not something that you could put a time limit on. Americans tend to operate in certain metaphoric frameworks, and that guides their impatience. To some extent, that’s OK here in the US, but it doesn’t work so well in other places. Putting aside your political views, but just if you observe Donald Trump as a negotiator — as a psychologist, what strikes you?…

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