About concessions

Which of these scenarios would make you happier?
Scenario A:
While walking down the street, you find a $20 bill.

Scenario B:
While walking down the street, you find a $10 bill. The next day, on a different street, you find another $10 bill.


The total amount of money found is the same in each scenario—yet the vast majority of people report that Scenario B would make them happier. More generally, extensive research (beginning with the work of the late Stanford University professor Amos Tversky and the Princeton University professor and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s) demonstrates that while most of us prefer to get bad news all at once, we prefer to get good news in installments.

Installments may also lead you to discover that you don't have to make as large a concession as you thought. When you give away a little at a time, you might get everything you want in return before using up your entire concession-making capacity. Whatever is left over is yours to keep—or to use to induce further reciprocity.

Finally, making multiple, small concessions tells the other party that you are flexible and willing to listen to his needs. Each time you make a concession, you have the opportunity to label it and extract goodwill in return.

This surely is a conclusion that can be used in any filed : may that be economics, relationships, psychology, etc.

Read more about it here.