Over the last couple of months, I have posted blogs entitled Anger Management (June 13, 2014), Good Faith (July 3, 2014); Listening for the Emotions (July 18, 2014); Which System is In Control? (July 25, 2014) and Vengeance Shall Never be Yours August 1, 2014). On numerous occasions, I have also [Read More]
In the last few weeks, I have published blogs about the way we think. That is, while we use System 1 throughout most of the day, it is intuitive, lazy, and emotional and does not always lead us down the correct path. In contrast, our System 2 is analytical, deliberate, [Read More]
Once again, another study has connected sleep deprivation with cognitive function. And, it provides some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that if a party witnesses an event while sleep deprived, and then is asked later to recall the event while still sleep deprived, she will [Read More]
With the upmost respect and acknowledgment to Hamlet's famous soliloquy in Shakespeare's Hamlet, (Act 3, Scen3 1, lines 55-87), the question often arises of when should the parties attempt to negotiate a settlement, through mediation or otherwise.Some argue that the sooner the better, before the parties become entrenched in their [Read More]
Some weeks, I am able to settle each matter that I mediate while other weeks, I am unable to settle even one. Like everyone else, I think in terms of "streaks"; that is, I am on a good "streak" or a bad "streak".An article in the June 26, 2014 edition [Read More]
n a recent post entitled "Listening for the Emotions", I discussed that the best way to calm someone down is to address the emotion and not the words. I learned this in a training session with Douglas E. Noll.However, I did not explain the theory behind this strategy. Again, Doug [Read More]
In his bestselling book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2011) notes that our brains contain two systems of thought: System 1 which "... operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control" (Id. at 20) and System [Read More]
Have you ever attempted to calm down an emotional person? Our natural inclination is to deny the emotional content of what the speaker is saying by using logic and/or facts such as, "There is no reason to get upset", "Calm down", "You are over-reacting", "You have misunderstood", "Maybe it is [Read More]
