Softness Makes Us Easy Touches

“Next time you visit a car dealership, avoid sitting in soft chairs and you’ll negotiate a better deal.” Matthew Hutson reports on new research, published in Science, on how the sensory feedback of weight, texture, and hardness can shape our attitudes and impressions. Weight we associate with seriousness and importance, coarseness with difficulty, and hardness with stability and strictness. As for the soft chairs, the scientists found that people sitting in a hard chair were more inflexible in their negotiating. For a practical application, Hutson suggests if you face conflict at home, “try replacing the Scott tissue with Angel Soft.”