Let’s say you need to meet a stranger tomorrow in NYC, but you can’t communicate in advance to coordinate time and place. So where and when do you meet them?

The answer is: the information booth at the center of Grand Central Station, at high noon.

That’s actually the empirically correct answer, as nearly 3/4 of respondents will say the same thing, thereby making it your best bet.

It’s an effect first illustrated by Nobel-winning economist Thomas Schelling: people naturally default to certain ‘focal points’ (later called ‘Schelling points’) in the absence of communication. In many problems, there are answers that seem inevitable (or specially meaningful), and people tend to gravitate towards them whether they mean to or not.

It’s a particularly useful concept in friendly negotiations, where you need to strike a balance between competition and coordination, rather than just fighting out every point. Try and find Schelling points that work for you as a compromise, and it’s easy to get your counter-party to accept them too, as they just seem right.