Episode 55 · 2021-01-01 · 16:11 · Original in Finnish
Psychology and channel feedback | Kaisa Mäkelä | Negotiator 55
Originally published as “Psykologia ja Neuvottelija-palautta | Kaisa Mäkelä | Neuvottelija 55”
Kaisa Mäkelä, founder of the startup Awareness Recreated, discusses consciousness, cognitive distortions and how non-verbal feedback exposes your own biases. This informal feedback episode also covers the non-verbal synchronisation broken by remote work, the channel dependency of online communities, and trolls as a psychological phenomenon, before Miettinen challenges the standing of Freud and Jung.
Core theses
- Non-verbal feedback is continuous and free: facial expressions, gestures and word choices are telling you about your own distortions all the time, which is why remote work's loss of those cues matters.
- The pandemic's unexpected gift to remote meetings was non-technical participants, who brought psychological texture and insisted on cameras being on.
- Online communities are channel-dependent, so a discussion built on one platform cannot be extended across society — Facebook excludes the young, and Discord excludes others.
- Trolling is evidence that emotions were successfully aroused, but its causes lie in the troll rather than the target.
- Freud and Jung are details within a very broad science rather than its mainstream, yet they survive because they described human behaviour accurately enough that it still holds — people have changed little.
Watch and listen
Key moments
- 00:00 — Awareness Recreated and the Helena Åhman book prize
- 02:42 — Cognitive distortions and non-verbal feedback
- 05:18 — What remote work broke, and what it unexpectedly gave
- 07:52 — The Negotiator community as an experiment
- 10:22 — Channel dependency: Facebook, Discord and the young
- 12:54 — Trolls as a psychological phenomenon
- 15:26 — Is Freud still worth reading?
Summary
Kaisa Mäkelä, founder of the startup Awareness Recreated, discusses consciousness, cognitive distortions and how non-verbal feedback exposes your own biases. This informal feedback episode also covers the non-verbal synchronisation broken by remote work, the channel dependency of online communities, and trolls as a psychological phenomenon, before Miettinen challenges the standing of Freud and Jung.
What is discussed
- Awareness Recreated. Mäkelä’s company exists to bring findings from psychology and ethics into everyday use — applied and pre-chewed so people can actually act on them.
- Feedback you are already receiving. Expressions, gestures and word choices supply constant non-verbal feedback, which is the cheapest route to spotting your own distorted thinking.
- Remote work cuts both ways. A twenty-year IT professional and long-time remote advocate now misses the office — but non-technical colleagues joining Teams brought humanity and pushed for cameras on.
- Coffee-table conversations. The Negotiator community spans a Facebook group, YouTube and audio platforms; Mäkelä found the exit and venture capital episodes most useful as a founder raising money.
- A background in finance. Before her IT career Mäkelä worked briefly at the Bank of Finland and turned down a permanent post for more creative waters.
- Channel dependency. Facebook does not reach the young, Discord does not reach everyone else, and no single platform carries a discussion across society.
- Trolls, read psychologically. Trolling proves emotions were aroused; the reasons belong to the troll. Miettinen would prefer real-name commenting.
- Freud in everyday language. Defence mechanisms — sublimation, avoidance — have entered ordinary vocabulary, but the application of psychology to daily life has not broken through.
- Miettinen’s challenge. A behaviourist rationalist’s objection: the famous thinkers tested nothing, and the Stanford prison experiment collapsed as apparently manipulated.
- Mäkelä’s answer. Yes and no — individual theories in a vast science, but ones that captured human behaviour well enough to survive, because people have not changed much.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Psykologia ja Neuvottelija-palautta | Kaisa Mäkelä | Neuvottelija 55. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
Go deeper
Explore the ideas in depth
Guides connected to this conversation, with frameworks and further reading.
Negotiation Strategy, Leverage and Power: Reading the Counterparty You Actually Have
A negotiation guide from the co-author of Neuvotteluvalta — the sources of leverage, BATNA and anchoring in practice, using information asymmetry, breaking deadlocks, and what to do when the counterparty negotiates on power rather than consensus. Grounded in Neuvottelija conversations and two decades of negotiation writing.
New Negotiation Power: The Definitive English Framework
The authoritative English presentation of Sami Miettinen and Juhana Torkki's New Negotiation Power framework: Power, Analytics, Interaction and Principles; preparation, roles, team design, trust and long-term negotiation performance.
People and topics
Guests: Kaisa Mäkelä
Topics: Leadership & Governance Negotiation