The $20 Auction
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Insight into the Nature of
Interpersonal Conflict
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A True Story
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Introduction
The Dollar Auction first appeared in 1971. Today, given inflation, the game is often played like this: A large group of people participate in the auction, say between 30 and 50. A $20 bill is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Bidding begins at $1. All subsequent bids must be in single dollar increments. The “twist” to this auction is that while the highest bidder wins the twenty dollar bill, the second highest bidder must pay to the auctioneer what he or she bid as well. In this auction, there will usually be not only be one loser, one who pays money for nothing, and but two. Read on!
By the time the auction reaches $19, most bidders drop out. The person who had bid $18 will invariably bid $20 to break even. Presumably, that would bring the auction to a close, right? Wrong! One professor who utilized the Dollar Auction as a teaching tool for more than 20 years said that the bidding will usually continue well past the $20 mark.
Consider this case in point, a day the professor will never forget. He used the dollar auction while teaching a course for executives in organizational behavior. At the end, the “winner” paid $54 for the twenty dollar bill. The loser paid $53. The rest of the class watched the futile bidding war with bewilderment and glee. (Proceeds would be donated to charity).
Things Heat Up
The professor then pulled out another $20 bill and asked if anyone wanted to bid on it. (Through the years he had observed, incredibly, that people typically bid more during the second auction than the first even though they all just witnessed how the auction works).
There were 70 people in the class that day. A variety of people made bids, some early, others late, right up to a bid of $20. Then, as is commonly the case, only two people remained, the one who stood to break even and the one who stood to lose. In this case, there were two men, one an engineer, the other the president of a small company.
Bidding eventually rose to $100. The professor got tired of counting by ones. He suggested that the bids now be made in $5 increments. The auction continued and the bids quickly grew to $400 with no let-up in sight. The professor suggested that the bids now be made in $10 increments. This caused no hesitation. Neither man was ready to relinquish the bidding war. As the auction continued, members of the class were screaming, pleading to their classmates to stop, but they didn't. When the bidding reached $700, the professor suggested that each bid be made in $20 increments. When bidding quickly reached $1,200, increments again changed, this time to $50 a bid. The professor’s knees were shaking and the class was in an uproar. When the president of the company bid $2,000, the engineer was silent. He made no reply. The auction had finally come to an end. Everyone was astonished and shocked by what had just occurred.
As the adrenaline and tumult of the moment passed, the two bidders felt embarrassed. The professor privately spoke to them for about a half hour during lunch break to debrief and reassure them that all was well. He also said that they didn't have to pay the full amount. The two men agreed to pay $50 each.
Reflecting on what transpired in a later homework assignment, the “winner,” the company president, noted that he simply got caught up in the moment. He wrote, “My ego took over and my competitive juices began to flow.” The engineer said much the same. “I was more concerned with ‘winning’ and ‘not giving up.’” Clearly, there came a point in the auction when the money was no longer the issue. The focus became the other person. The new concern was a very strong desire not to be beaten by one’s adversary and lose face in front of others. When that occurred, irrationality set in and the auction spun out of control.
Lesson To Be Learned
The Dollar Auction can be chalked up to a controlled classroom exercise. But what do you do when similar patterns of conflict escalation emerge in the real world, like at Eastern Airlines? Even more to the point, what do you do to break that destructive cycle in a church setting? It happens all to often! What do you do when you say to yourself in the midst of the conflict, “Stop the world, I want to get off!”? How do you safely get off? The answer is by bringing a peacemaking mediator into the picture. A peacemaker, by definition, is one who breaks the escalating cycle of conflict and helps people do what they have not been able to do on their own: make peace. It's as simple and profound as that!
© Copyright 2009 Dr. Kenneth C. Newberger. All Rights Reserved.
Permission to make copies of this information for use in your local church is granted provided that it is distributed free of charge and all copies indicate the copyright and source as listed above. For any other use, advance permission must be obtained.
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