Brains On Purpose™

Neuroscience to be included in upcoming international conference on contemplative practices in law and conflict resolution

Click to read more about this spring conference to be held at a law school in upper New York.

Mediate.com celebrates!

Mediate.com recently published the 300th issue of The Mediate.com Weekly.  The web version of the Weekly is at www.mediate.com/Newsletter.  The Weekly began 13 years ago under the guidance of Founding Editor John Helie.  Over time, the newsletter became a bi-weekly and then weekly
publication under the leadership of Editors John Ford and Jim Melamed. The Weekly offers the latest articles, news, blogs, calendar and resources and is available for free at www.mediate.com/Membership.

Click to learn more about this milestone anniversary.

Congratulations, John and Jim. You are offering an invaluable service to the mediation community. Thank you very much!

Scent of fairness in the air? Mediation running hot or cold? The importance of subtle environmental cues

Not only do the people in the room affect the outcome of a mediation, but the room itself may, too. How much attention do you pay to the little things in the conflict resolution setting? Let's look at some recent experiments that just might increase that attention.

One factor in the environment that may have an influence is smell. Research indicates that a scent in the room can promote fairness. From "Cleanliness May Foster Morality" (Live Science):

A simple spritz of a fresh-smelling window cleaner made people more fair and generous in a new study.

...

[Researchers] conducted fairness tests, with subjects completing tasks in a room that was either unscented or one that was sprayed with a common citrus-scented window cleaner.

When in a scented room, subjects were more charitable and fair.

Morality and cleanliness can go hand-in-hand," said study team member Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Some more interesting research that may confirm the relationship between morality and cleanliness:

[Katie] Liljenquist and Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto had previously shown that people who have committed sins feel urged to clean themselves physically. A separate study last year at the University of Plymouth in England found that a vigorous hand wash or shower could cause a person to be less judgmental.

I am not suggesting you mist the room with Windex prior to each session, but that paying close attention to the mediation room is important. Galinsky summarizes the underlying point of the research for mediators in this quote from "Do 'Clean' Smells Encourage Clean Behavior?" (TIME):

"Economists and even psychologists haven't been paying much attention to the fact that small changes in our environment can have dramatic effects on behavior. We underemphasize these subtle environmental cues," he says.

Another environmental variable that can affect how people see and interact with each other is temperature. Recent research has shown that the temperature of a room, or of a beverage being

Mindfulness for Conflict Resolvers: A class with Professor Len Riskin October 15 - 17

All the information is here.

Some brain-friendly ADR resources

LEADR's 10th ADR conference ended last Friday. Their site has links to podcasts by most of the presenters. In the past, I blogged here about a mediation artistry program: Professional Artistry of Mediation: Accessing more of your brain and the knowledge of your body. Click to read and hear about the LEADR program given by the same people, which this time they called "Artful inquiry: What does it mean to be an artful mediation practitioner?." In October, they will be presenting this program at the ACR annual conference, too.

In clicking through the programs, I saw some that appeared to be very interesting. (I also saw another misuse of the Mehrabian research; I have blogged at idealawg at least a couple of times on the Mehrabian myth.) Of course, there is a program on the brain. The conflict field is now being flooded with brain information; unfortunately some of it is reductionist pop neuroscience. In her podcast, the presenter says she has read some of Susan Greenfield's books so her approach is likely from a materialist viewpoint.

Click on over to listen to some of the podcasts. They are short.

On a somewhat related note, here are links to 50 Fascinating Lectures All About Your Brain.

Why use metaphors in conflicts? Because understanding is remembering in disguise

General Eisenhower to soldier: "Sarge, give me an assessment of the military situation."
Soldier: "Sir, picture a doughnut. We're the hole."
Quoted in Metaphorically Selling

The brain considers new information from the point of view of what it already knows and remembers, so the use of good metaphors is an effective way to communicate. Metaphors facilitate getting your message across in every area of your life, including dispute resolution. Those who have been reading my posts here for a while know that I have recommended metaphor use in the past; I am a metaphor advocate.

Here's what Anne Miller author of Metaphorically Selling has to say:

A metaphor is simply a way of communicating. It's a shortcut to instant understanding. Think of it as a mental equation in which something is compared to something else. Metaphors make complex and unfamiliar things or ideas simple and familiar to the listener, because they compare the unknown to what the listener already knows and accepts.

...

Information + Metaphor = "I see what you mean!"

Dr. Daniel Willingham puts it this way in Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. (The title of the section from which I have taken this excerpt is "Understanding Is Remembering in Disguise;" a great way to encapsulate the value of metaphor!)

[We] understand new ideas (things [we] don't know) by relating them to old ideas (things [we] do know). ...

...

The fact that we understand new ideas by relating them to things we already know helps us to understand some principles that are familiar to every teacher [and many skillful negotiators and mediators]. One principle is the usefulness of analogies.

Analogies and metaphors are cousins, both drawing similarities between two different things. Both can assist in understanding. Are you a user?

I know you use analogies everyday. Some examples from Metaphorically Selling:

• "Chew on an idea
• "Plow" through your work
• Return a "mountain" of phone messages
• Check your "inbox" emails
• "Surf" the web
• "Iron out the wrinkles in a speech
• "Mine" data

And are you using them in helping clients to resolve conflict? They're a good way to grease the mediation wheels. (Nah, I don't like that one either. Please suggest something better.)

Another BonP blog post on metaphors: Jell-O without whipped cream? Rhumba without rhythm? A joke without a punch line? Mediation without metaphor?.

Note (added November 11, 2009): Blog post from Mediation's Place: The Power of Metaphors.

New Web site for The Center for Understanding in Conflict

Click to learn more.

16th Annual Northwest Dispute Resolution Conference, May 1-2, 2009

This conference is one you won't want to miss. Speakers include Leonard Riskin the guru of mindfulness in conflict resolution and the practice of law. (See some of his writings here.) Others speakers include Sam Imperati, Robert Benjamin, Kay Haaland, Kenneth Cloke, Rebecca Hiers, James Melamed, and me.

For more information, here's the brochure.

Use music in mediation? Still no answer since one note, tone, or tune does not fit all

Because of the effects it can have on the mind and the brain, I would like to use music in mediation. (See one of my earlier posts on this quest.) So I have been trying to find out if there is music that is universally calming, invigorating, inspiring, you get the idea, or if the effect is so individual that use of music in a mediation or negotiation would be risky. Today I have some more pieces to the puzzle but no definitive answer yet.

I am happy to say that I just heard from a neuroscientist who said she has given a presentation on this topic. She is traveling this week but will get back to me with more information. I also have heard from many other helpful people, some of whom have referred me on to others.

Neuroscientist Dr. Robert Zatorre was kind enough to write (quoted with permission):

It is certainly true that music can have calming effects, just as it can have arousing effects, and even incite people to violence (think: Nazi marches, etc). The calming effects are to some extent probably universal in that low-intensity, smooth contours, small pitch variation, slowly moving music has features that are universally associated with being calm, or even sad (that is, when you are calm you move slowly, you don't jump around, and so forth). This is why both lullabies and funeral marches tend to be slow, soft, and so forth. There is some literature on this, and I would recommend the book by Sloboda and Juslin (Oxford U Press, 2001) on this topic. [Music and Emotion: Theory and Research]

However, cultural constraints are certainly very important, I think, and cannot be overlooked. There are all kinds of things that people "bring to the table" as it were, based on their background, upbringing, musical acculturation, etc.; even personal associations might be important (a certain mild, relaxing piece may be calming for most, but if it happens to reminds me of my ex-wife who left me for another man, then it might have a different effect!)

Therein lies the problem. So far it has not been easy to find anyone with a solution. Fortunately the detective work is compelling—and fun. I will keep you updated.

Note (added February 9, 2009, 9:00 AM Mountain): Somewhat related article: "All Together Now: How Getting in Sync Can Make You a Better Person" (Scientific American). Hat tip: Diane Levin via Twitter.

Note (added May 26, 2009): Steve Mehta blogged about music in mediation in his Mozart as a Mediator — Using Music To Influence Emotional Reactions in Mediation (Mediation Matters). If one could extrapolate the findings of the research to mediation, the problem posed above by Dr. Zatorre about what I will call The Ex-Wife Effect still remains. What is "happy music" to one may be something very different for another. The experiment cited by Mehta (involving a total of 45 participants) is described here. I am glad to see that others are becoming interested in the use of music in conflict resolution.

My latest post about music in mediation.

Note (added June 2, 2009): Changing a quote by Mel Helitzer. He wrote about humor but I am inserting the word "music" instead. "In matters of music, what is appealing to one person may be appalling to another."

Image credit: RoganJosh.

Professional Artistry of Mediation: Accessing more of your brain and the knowledge of your body

The people offering this workshop are on the same wavelength as I am, but they may not know how aligned they are with neuroscience. In the past, I have posted about using images to access different parts of the brain and of finding ways to access the body's knowledge, both of which can add much, including creativity, to dispute resolution.

That's why I was delighted to learn of the workshop Professional Artistry of Mediation [pdf]. It will access the image nuggets in the brain and discover what the body knows, all in service of redefining how mediators see conflict and their roles as resolvers. From the workshop description:

This workshop is designed to challenge and inspire you! The workshop provides an experiential and reflective space for participants to engage in creative processes and conversations to reflect on the artistry of their practice.

Participants will explore in a playful and hands-on way the art of what we do, our identities as mediators, how we think about conflict and its resolution, and where we might like to take our practice in the future.

The workshop will include a range of arts-based activities including improvisation, drawing, storytelling and working with artifacts.

A workshop like that would certainly facilitate the kind of shift I recommended to mediators in my last post, don't you think?

Image credit: ppdigital.

Conference in the Rockies: Topics include conflict resolution, neuroscience, meditation

Click for more information about Transforming the Practitioner: Attention to Intention.

Brains on Purpose is included in Alltop's new conflict resolution category

As you can see by the new addition to this blog—the Alltop logo over to the right—Brains on Purpose has been chosen for inclusion in the new Alltop category: Conflict Resolution. Read all about it here.