1 Thompson, L. L.,
and Hastie, R. (1990). “Social perception in negotiation.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47, 98–123, and Thompson, L. L., and Hrebec, D. (1996). “Lose–lose agreements in interdependent decision making.” Psychological Bulletin, 120, 396–409.
2 Tinsley, C. H., O’Connor, K. M., and Sullivan, B. A. (2002). “Tough guys finish last: The perils of a distributive reputation.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 88, 621–642.
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4 Fisher, R., and William Ury, W. (1983). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. New York: Penguin Books.
5 Galinsky, A. D., and Mussweiler, T. (2001). “First offers as anchors: The role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 657–669.
6 Galinsky, A. D., and Mussweiler, T. (2001). “First offers as anchors: The role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 657–669.
7 Frustrated by the low incidence of question asking and information sharing by negotiators, I took a drastic measure: I coached them to reveal information. In one investigation, I told negotiators in no uncertain terms to provide information to the other party. In the study, I compared three groups of people: revealers, questioners, and a control group. I told the revealers to share their interests with the other party and the questioners to ask about the counterparty’s interests. The control group received no specific instructions. The results were dramatic: The revealers and the questioners did much better than the control group in terms of win–win deals. Thus, the revealers and the questioners advanced toward the Pareto Optimal Frontier, while the control group satisficed. So, whether you ask or provide information in a negotiation is less important than just getting it out in the open. Moreover, the effects tended to multiply over time, meaning that as revealers and questioners completed more and more negotiations, they improved their outcomes at a faster rate than the control group. Keep in mind that nothing was preventing the control group from revealing their interests or asking questions. We just relied on their natural reluctance. We did one more critical experiment before telling the world of negotiators that it’s not only okay to reveal information but that it’s also one of the smartest things to do. Specifically, we had to show that revealing information wouldn’t increase the risk of exploitation. So we set up a study in which one negotiator was told to reveal information to the opponent, but the opponent was to avoid revealing any information. This created an asymmetrical situation in which one party knew the interests of the other party but not vice versa. Afterward, we looked for all possible evidence of exploitation—namely poorer performance by the lesser-informed negotiator. We found no evidence of exploitation. In fact, these asymmetrical pairs were much better at expanding the pie and reaching win–win deals on average than the control groups.
8 Thompson, L. (1991). “Information exchange in negotiation.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27, 61-179.
9 Tajfel, H. (1970). “Experiments in intergroup discrimination.” Scientific American, 223, 96–102.
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12 The 53 UN member states of the African Institute are the following: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome e Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
13 Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D. (1981). “The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice.” Science, 211, 45–58.
14 Bazerman, M. H. Magliozzi, T., and Neale, M. A. (1985). “Integrative bargaining in a competitive market.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35(3), 294–313.
15 The study was made by my colleagues Ashleigh Rosette of Duke University and Shirley Kopelman of University of Michigan. Kopelman, S., Rosette, A. S., and Thompson, L. (2006). “The three faces of eve: Strategic displays of positive, negative, and neutral emotions in negotiations.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 99, 81–101.
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21 Kray, L. J., Thompson, L., & Galinsky, A. (2001). “Battle of the sexes: Gender stereotype confirmation and reactance in negotiations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 942-958.
22 Croson, R., and Steven G. (2001). “Reputations in negotiation.” In Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H. C., and Gunther, R. E. (eds.), Wharton on Making Decisions (pp. 177–186). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
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25 White, J. B., Tynan, R., Galinsky, A. D., and Thompson, L. (2004). “Face threat sensitivity in negotiation: Roadblock to agreement and joint gain.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 94, 102–124.
26 Ury, W., Brett, J. M., and Goldberg, S. B. (1993). Getting Disputes Resolved. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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28 Drolet, A. L., and Morris, M. W. (2000). “Rapport in conflict resolution: Accounting for how non-verbal exchange fosters cooperation on mutually beneficial settlements to mixed-motive conflicts.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 26–50.
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31 Ibid
32 Przybylski, A. & Weinstein, N. (2013). “Can you connect with me now? How the presence of mobile communication technology influences face-to-face conversation quality.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30(3) 237-246.
33 Diermeier, D., Huffaker, D., and Swaab, R. I. (2011). “The language of coalition formation in online multiparty negotiations.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 30(1), 66–81.
34 Swaab, R. I., Maddux, W., and Sinaceur, M. (2011). “Virtual linguistic mimicry: When and how online mimicry increases negotiation outcomes.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 616–621.
35 Boone, A. L., and Mulherin, J. H. (2007). “How are firms sold?” The Journal of Finance, 62, 847–875.
36 Tharp, Bruce (2009). “Four organizational culture types.” White paper, Haworth Organizational Culture. Haworth.com
37 Morris, M. W., & Peng, K. (1994). “Culture and cause: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 67(6), 949-971.
38 Ury, W., Brett, J. M., and Goldberg, S. B. (1993). Getting Disputes Resolved. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
39 Tverksy, A., and Kahneman, D. (1974). “Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.” Science, 185, 1124-1131.
40 Fry, W. R., Firestone I., and Williams, D. L. (1983). “Negotiation process and outcome of stranger dyads and dating couples: Do lovers lose?” Basic and Applied Psychology, 4(1), 1.
41 In 1983, Max Bazerman and Margaret Neale coined the term fixed-pie perception to refer to this spurious belief. Bazerman, M., and Neale, M. (1983). “Heuristics in negotiation: Limitations to effective dispute resolution.” Research in Organizational Behavior, 9, 247–288.
42 I began to ponder how entrenched the fixed-pie perception is. For example, I wondered whether people in perfect agreement in reality would still see themselves in complete conflict. If one sister wanted oranges and the other wanted apples, would they still falsely assume that they were in competition? To investigate this, I created a scenario in which people negotiated face to face over eight issues. Two of the eight issues were ones in which negotiators had perfectly compatible interests, which should have resulted in full, mutually beneficial agreement on those issues. Depressingly, 25 percent of negotiators suboptimized on those issues, settling for something worse than what both of them wanted, making needless sacrifices. And among those who actually optimized on that issue, more than 50 percent did not know that they had optimized (that the other party had interests perfectly compatible with theirs). This was major empirical evidence of the pervasiveness of win–lose thinking.