Can you predict an opponent’s negotiating tactics if you know something about his or her personality? Because personality and negotiation outcomes are related but only weakly, the answer is, at best, “sort of.”37 Most research has focused on the Big Five traits of agreeableness, for obvious reasons—agreeable individuals are cooperative, compliant, kind, and conflict-averse. We might think such characteristics make agreeable individuals easy prey in negotiations, especially distributive ones. The evidence suggests, however, that overall agreeableness is weakly related to negotiation outcomes.

Self-efficacy (see Chapter 7) is one individual-difference variable that consistently seems to relate to negotiation outcomes.38 This is a fairly intuitive finding—it isn’t too surprising to hear that those who believe they will be more successful in negotiation situations tend to perform more effectively. It may be that individuals who are more confident stake out stronger claims, are less likely to back down from their positions, and exhibit confidence that intimidates others. Although the exact mechanism is not yet clear, it does seem that negotiators may benefit from trying to get a boost in confidence before going to the bargaining table.

Do moods and emotions influence negotiation? They do, but the way they work depends on the emotion as well as the context. A negotiator who shows anger can induce concessions, for instance, because the other negotiator believes no further concessions from the angry party are possible. One factor that governs this outcome, however, is power—you should show anger in negotiations only if you have at least as much power as your counterpart. If you have less, showing anger actually seems to provoke “hardball” reactions from the other side.39 “Faked” anger, or anger produced from surface acting, is not effective, but showing anger that is genuine (deep acting) is (see Chapter 4).40 Having a history of showing anger, rather than sowing the seeds of revenge, actually induces more concessions because the other party perceives the negotiator as “tough.”41 Anger has a cultural context. For instance, one study found that when East Asian participants showed anger, it induced more concessions than when the negotiator expressing anger was from the United States or Europe, perhaps because of the stereotype of East Asians as refusing to show anger.42

Another relevant emotion is disappointment. Generally, a negotiator who perceives disappointment from his or her counterpart concedes more. Anxiety also may impact negotiation. For example, one study found that individuals who experienced more anxiety about a negotiation used more deceptions in dealing with others.43 Another study found that anxious negotiators expect lower outcomes, respond to offers more quickly, and exit the bargaining process more quickly, leading them to obtain worse outcomes.44 Even emotional unpredictability affects outcomes; researchers have found that negotiators who express positive and negative emotions in an unpredictable way extract more concessions because this behavior makes the other party feel less in control.45 As one negotiator put it, “Out of the blue, you may have to react to something you have been working on in one way, and then something entirely new is introduced, and you have to veer off and refocus.”46

Do people from different cultures negotiate differently? The simple answer is the obvious one: Yes, they do. In general, people negotiate more effectively within cultures than between them. For example, a Colombian is apt to do better negotiating with a Colombian than with a Sri Lankan.

It appears that for successful cross-cultural negotiations, it is especially important that the negotiators be high in openness. This suggests a good strategy is to choose cross-cultural negotiators who are high on openness, and it helps to avoid factors such as time pressure that tend to inhibit learning about the other party.47 Second, because emotions are culturally sensitive, negotiators need to be especially aware of the emotional dynamics in cross-cultural negotiation. For example, individuals from East Asian cultures may feel that using anger to get their way in a negotiation is not a legitimate tactic, so they refuse to cooperate when their opponents become upset.48

There are many areas of organizational behavior (OB) in which men and women are not that different. Negotiation is not one of them. It seems fairly clear that men and women negotiate differently, that men and women are treated differently by negotiation partners, and that these differences affect outcomes.

A popular stereotype is that women are more cooperative and pleasant in negotiations than men. Though this is controversial, there is some merit to it. Men tend to place a higher value on status, power, and recognition, whereas women tend to place a higher value on compassion and altruism. Moreover, women tend to value relationship outcomes more than men, and men tend to value economic outcomes more than women.49

These differences affect both negotiation behavior and negotiation outcomes. Compared to men, women tend to behave in a less assertive, less self-interested, and more accommodating manner. As one review concluded, women “are more reluctant to initiate negotiations, and when they do initiate negotiations, they ask for less, are more willing to accept [the] offer, and make more generous offers to their negotiation partners than men do.”50 A study of MBA students at Carnegie-Mellon University found that the male students took the step of negotiating their first offer 57 percent of the time, compared to 4 percent for the female students. The net result? A $4,000 difference in starting salaries.51

One comprehensive literature review suggested that the tendency for men to receive better negotiation outcomes in some situations did not cover all situations. Indeed, the evidence suggested women and men bargain more equally in certain situations, women sometimes outperform men, and both men and women obtain more nearly equal outcomes when negotiating on behalf of someone else.52 In other words, everyone is better at advocating for others than they are at advocating for themselves. Factors that increased the predictability of negotiations also tended to reduce gender differences. When the range of negotiation settlements was well defined, men and women were more equal in outcomes. When more experienced negotiators were at the table, men and women were also nearly equivalent. The study authors proposed that when situations are more ambiguous, with less well-defined terms and less experienced negotiators, stereotypes may have stronger effects, leading to larger gender differences in outcomes.