Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both (13 page)

Just as slurs can be created, they can be reclaimed and reappropriated. Reappropriation happens when a stigmatized group takes a slur that another (dominant) group had used to demean them and uses the term
proudly
instead. It involves changing the meaning associated with the slur by taking the name for and by one's self.

Consider the hateful and vicious term “slut.” Long hurled at women to imply promiscuity, the word's connotations are exceedingly negative. Yet Heather Jarvis is on the front line in the battle to reclaim the word slut. Galvanized to action after a Toronto police officer proclaimed that women “should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized,” she started a movement to extinguish the mentality of blaming the victim. A key feature of her campaign has been to shift the connotation of the word slut from a hateful slur into a compliment! She founded the grassroots movement SlutWalk to encourage women to proudly embrace the word.

A similar mission has been advanced by the international sensation
The Vagina Monologues
. This play, a series of monologues billed as a “celebration of female sexuality,” has been performed by women in front of countless audiences across the globe. One of the monologues is literally entitled “Reclaiming Cunt.” Rather than accepting the derogatory connotation of the word,
The Vagina Monologues
empowers women by transforming the meaning associated with what is generally considered a highly offensive term.

So rather than banning offensive words, we can work to reappropriate them. This approach underscores some of the criticism that Sheryl Sandberg received when she proposed banning the word “bossy.” According to Margaret Talbot of
The New Yorker
, women need to “reappropriate the word [bossy], mining it for its positive associations with assertiveness.” And in fact, this is exactly the approach the “Black is Beautiful” campaign took in the 1960s. By changing the connotative meaning of the term “Black,” this campaign aimed to change the value of being a member of the group.

In popular culture, examples of reappropriation abound. In a movie (
8 Mile
), Eminem declares, “I'm a piece of white trash, I say it proudly,” and in
X-Men: First Class
, one of the persecuted mutants rallies others: “Let's reclaim that word: Mutant and proud.” Reappropriation declares that the term is now
our
term, that we are stealing the term from the bullies.

Reclaiming derogatory nicknames can be an effective way to defuse negative associations on the national political stage as well. Consider how Republicans pejoratively called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 “Obamacare.” By calling this legislation Obamacare, the Republicans were derogating it. But by the time of his reelection campaign in 2012, President Obama had fully embraced the term: His campaign urged supporters to post Twitter messages that began, “I like #Obamacare because…” And in the first presidential debate with Mitt Romney, Barack Obama explained, “I like the term Obamacare. That's okay, I have grown fond of it.” By owning the name Obamacare, the president reduced its power to stigmatize.

Reappropriation can even transform offensive or degrading symbols into badges of pride. The pink triangle, for example, was originally used as a Nazi concentration camp badge to stigmatize sexual offenders, most notably homosexual men. Years later, the gay community reclaimed it, but with their own literal spin; they flipped the triangle on its head to change it from a symbol of shame into one of empowerment. Rita Adessa, executive director of the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force, explained her thinking about the pink triangle this way: “Why don't we turn this around? And it was so symbolically apt that that's exactly what we did, because that's what this movement is all about. It is turning oppression around.” And over time, both the regular and upside-down pink triangle became potent symbols of gay pride.

The process of reclaiming a label can itself be a form of cooperative glue for a group. Working with Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas at Austin, we have found that when people label themselves with a derogatory term for their group, they feel more identified and more connected to their group.

Of course, changing entrenched cultural associations doesn't happen overnight. It took some time for the Obama campaign to reappropriate the term Obamacare. And it took time for the gay community to reappropriate the pink triangle. But it can be done.

In some cases, however, groups can reappropriate slurs quickly. This happens when the negativity of a phrase hasn't yet been cemented. Consider Jessica Ahlquist, who successfully sued her high school in Rhode Island to remove a religious prayer from her school auditorium. The day after the ruling in January of 2012, state representative Peter Palumbo attacked Ahlquist and characterized her as “an evil little thing.” In response, Ahlquist took ownership of Palumbo's phrase. She printed and sold T-shirts with the phrase “Evil Little Thing” to raise money for her college education. Within four months of selling T-shirts, she had raised $62,000!

Or consider how quickly a failed symbol can be reclaimed. During the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, one of the five snowflake-like figures of the Olympic ring failed to unfold. The Russians had failed to create the universal five-ring symbol of the Olympics—at the opening ceremony no less! Global mockery and derision ensued.

How did the Russian Olympic committee respond? They might have gotten defensive. They could have pointed to everything else that they had done right. But instead, they owned their mistake! In the closing ceremony, a group of dancers stayed tightly packed together when the rest of the dancers recreated the Olympic rings; this effectively replicated the four-out-of-five Olympic ring motif of the snowflake from the opening ceremonies. The audience
loved it
. They laughed and applauded and worldwide tweets exploded: “The Ring!” The Olympic ceremony director Konstantin Ernst even designed a shirt with four interlocking rings—and a small satellite circle that refused to open.

It is important to note that once a name or symbol has been fully reappropriated, the stigmatized group “owns” it. What this means is that even if it has become a term of pride or endearment within the group, it is often still taboo for those
outside
the group to use it. For example, non-blacks still can't use the n-word. Period. The well-known actor who played Kramer on
Seinfeld
, Michael Richards, learned this the hard way on November 17, 2006. During a stand-up comedy performance, he used the term on hecklers and was so vilified afterward that he ultimately gave up stand-up comedy. But for African Americans, the sense of ownership of the name is a source of pride. As the African American sociologist Michael Eric Dyson demonstrated when he remarked, “We hijacked, or word-jacked, that word.” Or as the writer Rembert Browne put it, “Saying [the n-word] in front of white people. I know some people who do, almost as a way of reminding white people that there is still something in this world a black person can do that whites can't.”

And this phenomenon isn't a feature of that particular word; consider how, after the New York Knicks lost their first game with their new golden boy point guard, Jeremy Lin (who happened to be Chinese American), ESPN posted a headline on their website that read,
CHINK IN THE ARMOR
. But the word “chink” is a historically derogatory term for Chinese people. And so, the editor was immediately fired. Yet it turns out that when Jeremy Lin was in high school, he had used the screen name ChiNkBaLLa88. Lin could refer to himself with the derogatory term, but others could not.

Although not every stigmatizing term can be reappropriated, in general, taking back a term that has been used against us can blunt the attacks of foes and transform victims into victors.

The idea that names can be reappropriated actually represents a larger phenomenon—owning your weaknesses and turning them into strengths. We saw this in how the Russians took ownership of their failure at the opening ceremony at the Sochi Olympics. Similarly, networking guru Keith Ferrazzi, author of
Never Eat Alone,
encourages people to “own your weaknesses at work. Be powerful with them, be the first to admit them, and what follows may surprise you.”

These examples illustrate how our foes will use opportunities to derogate us and exploit our weaknesses. However, by embracing our weaknesses, we can leverage them for our own advantage, both psychologically and materially.

When Shakespeare's Juliet says “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” she is suggesting that names don't matter. But Juliet misses a key psychological insight. How we name something can profoundly change how we feel about it—even if the essence is unchanged. What we call something matters a lot.

Finding the right name can help us compete more effectively, and also shift us from competition to cooperation. Varda Liberman from the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel demonstrated this with a very clever experiment. She found that the mere words you use to call a game determine whether people cooperate or compete. In her study, participants played a two-person game in which each party would get a good outcome if both of them cooperated, but there was always a temptation to compete and exploit the other side's cooperation. She told half of the participants that they would be playing the “Wall Street Game.” She told the other half that they would be playing the “Community Game.” Importantly, the incentives were
exactly the same
in both games.

When the game was called the Community Game, over 72 percent chose to cooperate. When the game was called the Wall Street Game, just 33 percent did. The
only
difference between the games was the name she used to describe it. Names matter. The right name can move us to cooperation. And a different name can lead us into competition.

The right name can even help us make sense of and even gain control over our emotions. Many of us have felt performance anxiety. Public speaking, a job interview, and even singing karaoke can cause our chest to tighten. But Alison Wood Brooks of Harvard University has explored how names can help us manage this performance anxiety so that we can compete more effectively. In one study, she had people sing “Don't Stop Believin' ” by Journey. In another study, she had people take a stressful math test. And in another, she had people deliver a videotaped speech. In every case, people felt anxious!

Think about the last time you faced a stressful task like this. What did you say to yourself? If you are like most people, you might have said to yourself, “Calm down” or “Take a deep breath.” But lots of research has found that trying to “calm down” in the face of anxiety isn't very effective. In fact, it can even backfire.

So Alison came up with a different approach. She had some participants say a different phrase before they performed: These participants said out loud “I am excited” before performing. People who stated that they were excited were more likely to succeed at these stressful tasks compared to people who tried to calm down. The excited participants nailed the Journey classic (earning higher scores from the Nintendo Wii), they outperformed others on the math test, and they were more likely to deliver persuasive and confident speeches (as rated by independent evaluators).

Notice what Alison is doing here. She is not trying to change or eliminate the heightened arousal people feel. She is simply getting people to reframe what that arousal means. When the arousal is seen as excitement it becomes positive, something to embrace. When the arousal is anxiety, it is negative and something to be avoided.

Here is the key insight. Choosing the right name to capture an internal feeling can help you deal with that feeling, or even harness it, rather than be defeated by it.

Finding the right name can also help us transition out of a bad mood before it spirals into competitive feelings. Take the example of how one couple addresses the invariably cranky behavior that we all experience. When one of them is in a bad mood, the other simply asks, “Are you having a fuss?” This couple has found that by giving a name to this state, it takes the force out of the bad mood and defuses the situation. By naming the situation “a fuss,” this couple moves from foe back to friend.

Matthew Lieberman at UCLA offers some insight into why this strategy works. Giving a name to an emotion as we experience it reduces activation in the parts of the brain like the amygdala that light up under duress. In other words, identifying and naming what we feel help us process and let go of our negative emotions.

In fact, correctly naming our emotions is one of the most powerful steps in dealing with those emotions. If we come home frustrated and angry from work, we may take out our anger on our spouse and kids. If, however, we identify our feelings and figure out what triggered those emotions (e.g., “I am angry because of what happened at work”), we and other scholars have consistently found that we become dramatically less likely to displace our feelings. By naming and attributing our feelings, we are less likely to take our anger (triggered by our foes) out on undeserving others (like our friends).

By identifying our feelings, we become more cooperative with our friends, and save our fury for our foes. But in order for these bonds of friendship to hold, the relationship needs to include one critical component: trust. We turn next to how to forge cooperative relationships out of competitive ones by winning others' trust.

Ron Klein had a problem. As he campaigned to unseat Clay Shaw, the 13-time incumbent congressman in Florida's 22nd District, he faced a formidable opponent. In his last election, Clay had beaten his opponent soundly: 63 percent to 35 percent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, early polls showed that Clay was likely to be reelected a 14th time. And as Ron campaigned, his chances became even worse—he was struggling to connect with voters.

What was particularly frustrating to Ron was that he knew the policy issues inside and out. As a member of the Florida legislature, he had expertise in education and criminal justice legislation, and he was energized to bring his ideas to Washington. When he got talking about policy issues, he sounded articulate and knowledgeable…but aloof. His problem was that he lacked the warmth he needed to connect with voters.

He knew that he needed help, so he reached out to a communication firm, KNP. In one meeting, the KNP team had Ron watch a TV interview he had given, and then asked him what he thought about his performance. Ron had ideas for a few additional points he wished he had added, but overall he thought he had done a good job.

Then the KNP team had him watch the video again. This time, they told him to notice how often he smiled. After watching the video the second time, Ron realized, “I never smile.”

It seems obvious that Ron needed to smile more often. But just telling Ron to smile more wasn't the answer. Why? Because fake smiles look, well, fake. Ron needed to feel emotion on the inside. Only then, they explained, would he be able to express warmth effectively on the outside.

So the team came up with a strategy. They had noticed that whenever Ron talked about his son, he broke out into a wide authentic smile. In the words of his campaign manager, Brian Smoot, whenever he talked about his son, “He just lights up.” And so, KNP got Ron to talk a bit about his son on the campaign trail. He would, after a few moments, transition right back to policy issues, but voters got to see Ron smile and they also got to see Ron as a warm and loving father.

As Ron's campaign headed into the final stretch, the tide began to turn. Ron was winning the trust of more and more voters. And lo and behold, on Election Day, against long odds, Ron won.

Research shows that people who inspire the most trust are those who exhibit two distinct traits:
warmth
and
competence
. Think of a friend or a coworker. Is this person warm or cold? And is this person competent or ineffective? We trust warm people, because we know they care about us; in contrast, cold people pose a potential threat to us. We trust competent people, because they are credible, effective, and efficient.

It turns out that there is a lot we can learn about trust once we know where people fall along these two dimensions: warmth and competence. In fact, Susan Fiske of Princeton suggests that warmth and competence are the key factors we use to understand anyone.

As you think about people who are naturally warm, the first people who come to mind are probably not world leaders. Many leaders are viewed as competent, but cold. This is exactly why politicians like Ron spend time on the campaign trail talking about their children and their childhood, or kissing babies.

It's also why, in the United States, every American president since the advent of television has consistently employed a specific public relations tool after moving into the White House: He's gotten a dog. Even the Obamas, who had never owned a dog and whose daughter Malia is
allergic
to dogs, felt compelled to get one. After all, there are few things that make someone look warmer than nuzzling with a cuddly, tail-wagging dog. The warmth these images project ultimately builds trust.

Perceptions of warmth and competence influence how much we trust other people as well as how much other people trust us. Ron Klein projected competence, but what he initially lacked, and what almost cost him the election, was warmth. Many of us inherently project either warmth
or
competence. But if we want to build strong relationships, we need to project both. And when it comes to making friends, the people
we
want to connect with are those who are high on both dimensions.

If a complete stranger came up to you on the street and asked to borrow your cell phone, what would you do? Most people are, at least at first, reluctant. After all, these days, cell phones are expensive and often contain a great deal of personal information. You probably wouldn't hand your phone over to just anyone. You would have to trust them.

This is why we used this very scenario in an experiment we ran with Alison Brooks of Harvard to better understand the trust-building process. We had a research assistant approach people with the cell phone request as they entered the train station on a rainy day. (We spaced out the requests so that people would never see someone else who was approached.) Our research assistant would ask to borrow the person's cell phone in one of two ways. Half of the time he simply asked, “Can I borrow your phone? I need to make an important call.” In this condition, only 9 percent of people were willing to hand over their cell phone.

In the other condition, the research assistant said, “I'm sorry about the rain! Can I borrow your phone? I need to make an important call.” This opening statement is, on the face of it, a bit absurd. After all, it doesn't make much sense to apologize for something (like the rain) over which we have no control. However, this “superfluous apology” demonstrates concern and conveys warmth—and in turn, engenders trust.

When “I'm sorry about the rain!” preceded the request, 47 percent of people handed it over. That's a 400 percent increase over the normal request!

We found this same pattern of results for a whole set of scenarios (e.g., I'm sorry about your delayed flight; I'm sorry you were stuck in traffic). Regardless of how superfluous the apology was, as long as it conveyed care and concern, it boosted perceptions of warmth and increased trust. And with a dose of trust, people were willing to cooperate even when they were vulnerable and could have been exploited.

In these studies, the words themselves projected warmth. But words aren't the only form of communication that can help build trust.
How
we say things is often more important than what we say, and when it comes to conveying warmth, nothing works like nonverbal cues.

Let's return to our opening story of Detective Marshall Frank and the murder suspect Paul Rowles. It wasn't just
what
Marshall said, but
how
he said it that mattered. First, Marshall sat close to Paul and leaned in so they were almost touching. It turns out that physical connection is one of the best things we can do to build trust. We might think little of it, but actions like handshakes, an embrace, a pat on the shoulder, or even a light touch on an elbow can send a powerful cooperative message.

Detective Marshall also talked to his suspect face-to-face, and when it comes to trust, face-to-face meetings are critical. Being in the same place signals commitment to the relationship, heightens our focus, and allows for more complete communication—including the ability to project warmth.

As professors, we speak to a lot of students who ask for our advice about job offers. Part of the advice we give is always the same. If this is an employer you care about and you want your prospective boss to know that this is a relationship you value, go meet them in person. A phone call simply doesn't convey your concern for the relationship the way that a face-to-face meeting does.

So make the effort to meet someone face-to-face. Sometimes this involves getting on a plane. Other times it involves walking down the hall. When we make this effort, we send the message that we care about the relationship, and we build trust.

When trying to win over others—whether it's the electorate, a murder suspect, a client, or a boss—warmth is clearly important, but competence also matters. It wasn't enough for Ron Klein to be warm; he also needed to be competent.

When we meet someone, we immediately assess their credibility, whether consciously or not. On the conscious level, we might look at obvious cues, like credentials—degrees, professional achievements, and so on. As we saw in our discussion of names and labels, one way we express confidence is with titles. This is why many professors want to be called “doctor.”

But often enough people subconsciously look for more subtle hints as well as the obvious ones. So how can we learn to convey the kinds of subtle cues that will help us project competence, and in turn, build trust? One way is by using the right terminology—in other words, “talking the talk.” When we tell our students they need to use the correct terms on their exams in our classes, they don't like it much. They think that when it comes time for a test, understanding concepts matters much more than what they deride as jargon. And they have a point. But terminology still matters. The correct use of terms and jargon identifies us as experts—whether as lawyers or real estate agents or financial wizards—and it in turn breeds confidence.

People pay attention to even more superficial cues than using the right jargon. Like it or not, in most domains, if you want to project competence, it pays to
appear
competent—in everything from the car you drive to the cufflinks you wear. One of our students took this advice so seriously that he rented a Rolls-Royce to impress important clients at a lunch meeting to convey the image that he was successful and had far more well-paying clients than he really did. Whether it helped him win the business, we don't know…But it certainly made an impression.

Of course, cues that project credibility in one context may fail to project credibility in another context. What's important is that the cue matches the situation. Take surgeons. When we are on the operating table, the woman who walks into the operating room wearing scrubs has instant credibility. But when we need a mechanic, and someone walks into the garage wearing scrubs, this doesn't inspire confidence that our car will be fixed. The scrubs are still a “cue,” but in this case they don't match the situation—wearing scrubs in a garage is unlikely to build credibility the way it does in the operating room.

We also build credibility when our deeds match our words. Remember the example from our discussion of comparisons about how quickly American Airlines lost the trust of their pilots when executives asked the pilots to take massive pay cuts while simultaneously giving themselves retention bonuses? Nobody is less credible than a hypocrite.

Or perhaps remember how, in 2008, the three leading automakers in the United States came to Washington, D.C., to ask for a bailout? They explained that their companies were broke, that their financial situation was dire, and that their only way to survive was with help from the government. They needed billions of dollars in government support or they would go bankrupt.

Their request sparked a firestorm of criticism. But the public's anger wasn't focused on the amount of the request or whether the automakers were deceitful. In fact, they were being completely truthful: Their financial straits
were
dire. The problem was that each of the three executives had flown to Washington, D.C., on his own company's private jet. They were roundly condemned as hypocrites, and their credibility was at that moment totally shot. (In Chapter 8, on rebuilding trust, we'll learn about what they did to earn back that trust.)

And it is not just individuals who need to be credible. Institutions need credibility, too. And both people and institutions can gain credibility from each other. For example, researchers gain credibility by associating with universities, other scientists, and the prestige of the journals that publish our work. Professionals gain credibility by working at prestigious companies and joining exclusive associations. In turn, these institutions become more credible, and that credibility becomes a competitive advantage.

This is true not just in business; when countries have strong and credible legal institutions, for example, they enjoy greater economic growth. This is in part because trust in our legal institutions enables us to buy, sell, and trade effectively and efficiently.

In fact, the ability to trade has even been cited as an evolutionary advantage for humankind, and one reason some scholars think Homo sapiens were able to outcompete Neanderthals who had superior strength and even 10 percent larger brains. Consider for a moment the role of credibility and trust in one of the most significant inventions in human history: money. It used to be the case that people bartered for goods and services. But this was inefficient and limited. For example, a worker might get paid with food, but other people, like a landlord, might not accept that “currency.” Money solves this problem.

But for money to work effectively, we have to
trust
the currency of exchange. And we need institutions to offer this security. Credible institutions, in other words, are necessary both for cooperating within one's society, and for competing in the global marketplace.