Ideas Made to Matter
The top 10 MIT Sloan news stories of 2021
From a machine learning explainer to trends in data and artificial intelligence, here are the stories that readers needed most this year.
Dec 1, 2021
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Jared R. Curhan
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Jared Curhan is the Gordon Kaufman Professor and a Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as Faculty Director of MIT’s Behavioral Research Lab.
Curhan specializes in the psychology of negotiation and conflict resolution. A recipient of support from the National Science Foundation, he has pioneered a social psychological approach to the study of “subjective value” in negotiation—that is, the feelings and judgments concerning the instrumental outcome, the process, the self, and the relationship. His research uses the Subjective Value Inventory (SVI; Curhan et al., 2006) to examine the precursors, processes, and long-term consequences of subjective value in negotiation. He also studies the dynamics of negotiation and brainstorming.
Curhan is Vice Chair for Research and a member of the Executive Committee of the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, a world-renowned inter-university consortium dedicated to developing the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution. He is also Director of the PON Research Lab and Director of MIT's Negotiation for Executives Program.
Curhan founded the Program for Young Negotiators, Inc., an organization dedicated to the promotion of negotiation training in primary and secondary schools. His book, Young Negotiators (Houghton Mifflin, 1998) is acclaimed in the fields of negotiation and education, and has been translated into Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic. It has been used to train more than 35,000 children across the United States and abroad to achieve their goals without the use of violence.
Deeply committed to education at all levels, Curhan has received the Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship for excellence in teaching and university service, as well as MIT's Institute-wide teaching award, MIT Teaching with Technology Award, and MIT Sloan's Jamieson Prize for excellence in teaching. His three-day crash course, Negotiation Analysis, is open to all MIT students via lottery. He also offers a 10-week, open-enrollment online course with live negotiations, Mastering Negotiation and Influence.
Curhan holds an AB in psychology from Harvard University and an MS and a PhD in psychology from Stanford University.
Honors
Jared Curhan received the "Best Theoretical Paper" award
Curhan wins digital technology teaching award
Publications
Featured Publication
"Advancing AI Negotiations: New Theory and Evidence from a Large-Scale Autonomous Negotiations Competition."Vaccaro, Michelle, Michael Caoson, Harang Ju, Sinan K. Aral, and Jared R. Curhan, MIT Sloan Working Paper 7259-25. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, March 2025. arXiv Preprint.
Featured Publication
"Silence is Golden: Extended Silence, Deliberative Mindset, and Value Creation in Negotiation."Curhan, Jared, Jennifer R. Overbeck, Yeri Cho, and Teng Zhang. Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 107, No. 94 (2022): 78-94. SSRN Preprint.
"Supermind Ideator: How Scaffolding Human-AI Collaboration Can Increase Creativity."
Heyman, Jennifer L., Steven R. Rick, Gianni Giacomelli, Haoran Wen, Robert J. Laubacher, Nancy Taubenslag, Pranav Ragupathy, Jared R. Curhan, Thomas W. Malone, Max Sina Knicker, and Younes Jeddi. Collective Intelligence Vol. 3, No. 4 (2024).
"Negotiator Consistency, Counterpart Consistency, and Reciprocity in Behavior Across Partners: A Round-Robin Study."
Elfenbein, Hillary Anger, Jared R. Curhan, and Noah Eisenkraft. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Vol. 49, No. 7 (2023): 1071-1085.
"Improve Creative Brainstorming with Constructive Criticism."
Curhan, Jared R. MIT Sloan Management Review, July 2022.
"Cooperative Criticism: When Criticism Enhances Creativity in Brainstorming and Negotiation."
Curhan, Jared R., Tatiana Labuzova, and Aditi Mehta. Organization Science Vol. 32, No. 5 (2021): 1256-1272. Appendix. SSRN Preprint.
Recent Insights
Ideas Made to Matter
In negotiation, use silence to improve outcomes for all
“There are creative ways to address conflicts, and there is more room for agreement than people assume.”
Apr 27, 2021
Media Highlights
Press
The AI Journal
Seven lessons in AI & negotiation
Professor Jared Curran wrote: "The idea of letting machines into the room during a high-stakes negotiation can sound far-fetched — or even a bit unsettling. But in fact, AI is already beginning to shape how we negotiate, how we study negotiation, and even how we teach the practice."
Press
MSNBC
Speak less, win more: The art of using silence in negotiations at work
"Pausing silently can be a simple yet very effective tool to help negotiators shift from fixed-pie thinking to a more reflective state of mind."
Press
The Wall Street Journal
How to use silence in business meetings
"If it serves to enable you to think more clearly, then pausing is something you should consider doing at work or in any negotiation."
Press
MIT Sloan Management Review (Opinion Piece)
Improve creative brainstorming with constructive criticism
"A growing number of studies show that criticism might actually heighten creativity and imagination."
Executive Education
Executive Education Course
Negotiation Essentials Sprint: AI-Accelerated Learning
In this self-paced course, you will learn fundamental negotiation concepts and strategies you can implement immediately to improve your performance in a variety of settings. From creating and claiming value to building subjective value, you will acquire a broad and deep understanding of negotiation theory, research, and skills.
- I will choose dates later
Executive Education Course
Negotiation Strategy Sprint: AI-Accelerated Learning
- I will choose dates later