How barbaric, I thought when reading about male gorillas’ tendencies to raid neighboring groups, kill or chase away all of the enemy males, and force the females back with them. My self-righteous indignation suffered quite a setback this morning, when studying Robert Wright’s excellent study of game theory and cultural evolution, as he described the laws of one particular tribe of humans: their soldiers were instructed to kill all the male citizens they encounterd, whilst capturing whichever females they wanted as prisoners. What backward tribe might this be? The Athenians, whom we celebrate as the founders of democracy.

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And, on the other hand, psychologist Steven Pinker describes a chimp who was shown several boxes containing food, and one containing a snake. He led the other chimps over to the box containing the snake and, “after they fled screaming, he feasted in peace.” Machiavelli’s exact advice to the Prince….

Is saying “no” to people one of the hardest things you can do? It can be. Or it can become a way to make people like you even better than they did before–if you know the proper mental aikido moves. You have a couple of ways to do this:

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1. Make them laugh: if you can turn the refusal into something so funny they fall off their chair laughing, they’ll smile everytime they think of it. It should, of course, make them look good: you could create a cartoon depicting the situation as a super-hero world (with them as the superhero), or even make a comedy podcast out of the situation.

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2. Share a secret: turn the request refusal into an opportunity to confide, to open up, make them feel that they are the privileged and trusted recipients of highly confidential information. Human beings naturally love secrets–we have an innate tendency to value what is scarce, be it resources (diamonds are valuable because…) opportunities (this is your last chance to…) or information (don’t you automatically perk up and pay close attention when someone tells you a secret?)

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3. If you, indeed, do wish you could’ve said yes, point out to them all the reasons why this is so–all the reasons why you would’ve loved to say yes, and all the reasons why it pains you to say no. The more empathy you show (particularly using the full range of facial expressions, voice tones and body language) the more they will feel that you really, truly understand them. Of course, in this case you’d better have an irrefutable reason why your acceptance cannot be given.