From Charlie Munger’s “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”
“The automatic tendency of humans to reciprocate both favors and disfavors has long been noticed as extreme, as it is in apes, monkeys, dogs, and many less cognitively gifted animals.”
“The standard antidote one’s overactive hostility is to train oneself to defer reaction. You can always tell the man off tomorrow, if it is such a good idea.” (p.466)
“Of course, the tendency to reciprocate favor for favor is also very intense, so much so that it occasionally reverses the course of reciprocated hostility.”
Examples:
Car dealer gives you coffee. You will likely be tricked into spending hundreds of dollars more than you wanted.
The antidote: Don’t accept favors from vendors.
When negotiating, start with ridiculous high demands. Then concede your ridiculous high demands with just high demands. Your opponent will probably accept you high demands. Because they see you are conceding, they will reciprocate by conceding a little bit too.