The Goal of Negotiations

The goal of negotiations may be deal-making or dispute resolution. Before entering the actual negotiation, well-prepared negotiators define the goals they want to achieve and the key issues they need to address in order to achieve these goals (Lewicki et al., 2021). Deal-making (e.g., a student selling his bike) involves two or more parties who have some common goals (e.g., transferring ownership of the bike from the seller to the buyer) and some incompatible goals (receiving a high price vs. paying a low price), and try and negotiate an agreement that is better for both than the status quo (the seller keeping the bike) or any alternative agreements with third parties (e.g., selling the bike to someone else or buying a different bike). Negotiation with the aim of dispute resolution (e.g., a student complaining about the noise a flatmate makes) occurs when parties who are dependent on each other (e.g., because they share a flat) realize that they are blocking each other’s goal attainment (preparing for an exam vs. listening to punk rock) and negotiate what can be done to solve the problem.

Preparing for Negotiations

Negotiators are advised to define their alternatives, targets, and limits, and to prepare an opening offer (Lewicki et al., 2021). Figure 1 shows the key points in the example of a student selling his bike to another student. The target point is the point at which each negotiator aspires to reach a settlement. For example, the seller hopes to sell his bike for €280, and the buyer hopes to buy it for €190. By making opening offers beyond their targets, negotiators create leeway for concessions while pursuing their goal. In the bike example, the seller has prepared an opening offer (e.g., an asking price) of €320, while the buyer planned to start the negotiation by offering to pay €150. Well-prepared negotiators define their limits before entering a negotiation by setting a resistance point, that is, the price below which a settlement is not acceptable (Lewicki et al., 2021). If, for example, the seller would accept any price above €200 and the buyer is willing to pay up to €280, it is likely that they settle on a price somewhere in this range. This zone between the two parties’ resistance points is called zone of potential agreements (ZOPA; Lewicki et al., 2021).

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Figure 1. Overview of Key Points in Negotiation Preparation (Example).

Well-prepared negotiators are aware of the alternative they have to reaching a deal in the upcoming negotiation, in particular of their best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA; Fisher et al., 2012). As the quality of a negotiator’s BATNA defines their need to reach an agreement, and thus their dependency on their counterpart, attractive BATNAs increase a negotiator’s power.

Deal-making and dispute resolution differ in the way parties are dependent on each other: in deal-making, both parties can have independent alternatives that they can unilaterally decide to turn to instead of reaching a deal (the buyer may find a different seller, and the seller might find another potential buyer). Disputes that occur between parties who share a common fate, like flatmates, parents of a child, co-owners of a company, or different ethnic or religious groups living on the same territory, can only be solved by the parties working together. The alternative to not solving a dispute for both disputants therefore is conflict escalation (e.g., sabotaging the stereo installation), a victory for one (and a grudge for the other) or a stalemate in which neither party is willing to abandon their position. These alternatives usually do not last or they damage the relationship between the parties.

Differentiation before Integration

Negotiations often follow a differentiation-before-integration pattern in which negotiating parties start with distributive, forcing behavior, such as threatening the other party or fiercely arguing for their own interests. Only after realizing that this competitive behavior does not bring them any closer to an agreement, for example because the other party does the same, they tend to switch to more integrative negotiation and become willing to look for mutually satisfactory agreements (Harinck & De Dreu, 2004; Olekalns & Smith, 2005; Walton & McKersie, 1965). In lab studies, such switches from competitive to cooperative negotiation often occur after temporary impasses (Harinck & De Dreu, 2004)—moments in a negotiation in which parties take a time-out before having reached an agreement. In field studies, such switches have been described as “ripe moments” (Zartman, 1991) or “turning points” (Druckman, 2001; Druckman & Olekalns, 2011).

Outcomes of Negotiations

Outcomes of negotiations are either an impasse when no agreement is reached or an agreement that can be either distributive (win–lose) or integrative (win–win). Outcomes can be measured as objective or economic outcomes—such as money or points—and as subjective outcomes—such as satisfaction with the outcome or process and willingness to interact in the future (Curhan, Elfenbein, & Kilduff, 2009). Distributive agreements are those that divide some fixed resources between parties in a win–lose way—one party’s gains are the other party’s losses. An example would be a situation in which a buyer and seller are negotiating only about the price of a bike. Win–lose does not necessarily imply victory of one party over the other—a simple compromise (50–50) where parties meet in the middle of their initial demands is an example of a distributive agreement as well. Distributive negotiation styles are likely to lead to impasses when parties match their forcing behavior, or to distributive agreements when one party yields to the forcing of the other or when both decide to compromise and “meet in the middle.”

Integrative agreements are those that divide an expanded set of resources and thereby increase the benefit for both negotiators. Contrary to distributive bargaining, which is dominated by value-claiming strategies, integrative negotiation offers the possibility to create value, that is, to find solutions that improve the outcomes to both parties (Lewicki et al., 2021). A key activity in integrative negotiation is to generate alternative solutions to the problem at hand. One way to generate alternative solutions is by adding resources and negotiating about more than initially planned, thereby making a deal more attractive to both parties. Figuratively, negotiators expand the pie before they divide it. For example, the seller of a bicycle might add a good bicycle lock that he does not need any more, thereby making a better deal selling his bike and lock, while the buyer gets a good lock for his new bike and in total pays less than he would have paid if he had to buy a new lock in a shop.

Another way to generate alternative solutions is by discussing multiple issues rather than single issues, and by determining which issues are more and less important. For example, the seller of the bicycle might be a returning exchange student who cannot take the bike to his home country, but he needs to use it until the final days of his stay. By negotiating the price and delivery date, buyer and seller may integrate the seller’s preference for a late delivery with the buyer’s preference for a lower price. Integrative negotiation styles can lead to integrative agreements; if negotiators trust each other, exchange information, and gain an accurate understanding of their preferences and priorities, they might detect common interests (Rubin et al., 1994) and mutually beneficial trade-offs across topics that vary in importance (Ritov & Moran, 2008), so-called logrolling (Thompson & Hastie, 1990). Parties can also reach integrative agreements through an implicit way of exchanging information, for example by proposing multiple equivalent simultaneous offers (MESOs; Leonardelli, Gu, McRuer, Medvec, & Galinsky, 2019) and letting the other side choose which offers they prefer. For example, knowing that a rental bike would cost €50 a week, the seller may propose two equally attractive offers—selling the bike immediately for €300, or selling it in one week for €250. The prospective buyer, provided he has little urgency, might choose the latter option, thereby creating value from the different priorities that the two parties have.

An important ability of negotiators is perspective-taking, the cognitive capacity to consider the world from another individual’s viewpoint (Galinsky & Mussweiler, 2001; Trötschel, Hüffmeier, Loschelder, Schwartz, & Gollwitzer, 2011). Perspective-taking helps negotiators detect logrolling opportunities and thereby exploit the integrative potential of a negotiation situation (Trötschel et al., 2011).

Fixed-Pie Perception

A fixed-pie perception is the common assumption that the interests of the parties are diametrically opposed such that “my gain is your loss” (Thompson & Hastie, 1990). This idea is related to the view that negotiation is a purely distributive contest in dividing a fixed amount of resources in which the winner claims a larger share than the loser. When both parties have a fixed-pie perception, they are unlikely to notice that their priorities may differ and might overlook profitable opportunities for a mutually beneficial exchange of concessions (logrolling; as described in the section “Outcomes of Negotiations”).

Anchoring

Anchoring is the tendency to rely on a first number when making a judgment. For example, the interested buyer might offer a higher price if, immediately before negotiating the price of the second-hand bike, he saw an ad for a bike costing €1,500, than if he saw a bike offered for €100. The offer made for the second-hand bike is thus influenced (anchored) by prior information. This bias is related to the first-offer effect. In negotiations, the first offer functions as an anchor point at which the negotiation starts and a negotiation agreement is often in favor of the first party that proposes a concrete number (Galinsky & Mussweiler, 2001; Loschelder, Trötschel, Swaab, Friese, & Galinsky, 2016).

Intrapersonal Effects of Emotions

The intrapersonal effects of emotions are straightforward. Negotiators who are in a bad mood, or who feel angry or disappointed, are more likely to engage in forcing behavior and less likely to accommodate the other party. On the other hand, negotiators who are in a good mood or feel happy are more likely to be lenient negotiation partners who are willing to make a deal (Allred, Mallozzi, Matsui, & Raia, 1997; Friedman et al., 2004; Kopelman, Rosette, & Thompson, 2006; Van Kleef & De Dreu, 2010; Van Kleef, De Dreu, & Manstead, 2004).

Interpersonal Effects of Emotions

The interpersonal effects of emotions in negotiations are summarized by the Emotions-As-Social-Information Model (Van Kleef, 2009), which proposes that a negotiator’s emotions affect the behavior of their counterparts via two distinct processes. Emotions trigger inferential processes and affective reactions in the targets of those emotions. The inferential process means that emotions give information about the aspirations of a party—an angry reaction of a counterpart on a proposal signals that the counterpart has set ambitious limits. As a result, an angry reaction by party A often triggers a yielding response by party B, in order to satisfy party A and reach an agreement (Sinaceur & Tiedens, 2006; Van Kleef et al., 2004). A happy reaction by party A, on the other hand, might indicate the proposal is near target point of party A, and party B may conclude that no further concessions are required in order to reach an agreement.

Emotions might also trigger an affective reaction in the receiver; an expression of anger of party A is likely to engender an angry reaction by party B in return, whereas a more happy reaction will trigger a happier response. In general, the interpersonal effect of anger is exemplified by the finding that negotiators who express anger will get a yielding response from their counterpart, but only when the other party is willing and able to take the emotions of the angry party into account (Sinaceur & Tiedens, 2006; Van Kleef et al., 2004). On the other hand, an expression of happiness is met with a more competitive or less yielding response. Expressing anger in negotiations can backfire, however (Van Kleef et al., 2008). Anger directed at the person, rather than at a proposal, is likely to lead to retaliation rather than concessions (Steinel, Van Kleef, & Harinck, 2008), and the same effect occurs for angry expressions in value-laden conflict (Harinck & Van Kleef, 2012); people may overtly concede to a counterpart who expresses anger, but they might subsequently retaliate covertly (Wang, Northcraft, & Van Kleef, 2012). Similarly, expressing anger helps powerful negotiators who may receive a conciliatory response, but harms powerless parties, who are more likely to receive an angry, non-conciliatory response (Overbeck, Neale, & Govan, 2010; Van Dijk, Van Kleef, Steinel, & Van Beest, 2008). Also, fake expressions of anger aimed at trying to get the other party to concede are more likely to lead to intransigence rather than to conciliatory behavior in the receiving party, due to reduced trust (Campagna, Mislin, Kong, & Bottom, 2016; Côté, Hideg, & Van Kleef, 2013).

The cognitions and emotions of negotiation parties show that negotiators are humans; they think, make mistakes, and feel. In fact, for many people negotiations can be quite stressful due to either their thoughts or their feelings about the negotiation. The next section, “Gender,” will address situational characteristics that influence negotiation processes, behaviors, and outcomes, focusing on three major situational factors—the gender composition of the negotiating dyad, the power positions of the dyad members, and the cultural environment in which negotiations take place.

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat is an important cause for the lower negotiation outcomes achieved by female than by male negotiators (Kray, Galinsky, & Thompson, 2002; Kray, Thompson, & Galinsky, 2001). People experience a stereotype threat when they feel their performance is evaluated on a task in a domain for which they are aware of negative stereotypes about their group’s abilities (Derks, Scheepers, Van Laar, & Ellemers, 2011). For example, female participants who are evaluated on a math test or in a negotiation might experience stereotype threat, due to the stereotypical belief that women are bad at math or in negotiation. Under conditions in which the stereotype threat is neutralized by presenting the negotiation as a learning tool rather than as an assessment tool, or when female characteristics are linked to negotiation success, gender differences diminish or disappear (Kray et al., 2001, 2002). Gender differences also disappear when people negotiate on behalf of another person or party (Amanatullah & Morris, 2010). In that situation, the female stereotypes of caring for others and the negotiation aim align, and male and female negotiators perform equally well.

Stereotype Reactance

Several remedies mitigate this potential disadvantage for female negotiators. First, awareness of stereotype threat can reduce its effects by stereotype reactance. In a study using typical math tests, gender differences disappeared when the test was presented as a problem-solving task rather than a math test, and also when participants received additional information explaining how stereotype threat can interfere with women’s performance on a math test (Johns, Schmader, & Martens, 2005). As such, informing female negotiators that a negotiation might trigger a stereotype threat that might interfere with their performance can help neutralize the stereotype threat and its effects.

Backlash

Backlash is the negative reaction that female negotiators face when they engage in gender-incongruent competitive negotiation behavior (Kulik & Olekalns, 2012). Women can prevent expectancy violations and thus minimize the likelihood of backlash by giving external attributions for competitive behaviors (anticipatory excuses or justifications, such as “my mentor advised me to . . .” or “my association has released a salary survey, and my salary seems to be below average . . .”) or by stressing gender-normative behavior, like using inclusive language (“I am sure we can find a mutually satisfactory agreement”), or influence tactics that indicate warmth and caring (“can you help me to . . .”; Kulik & Olekalns, 2012).

Finally, gender differences tend to diminish when clear instructions to negotiate signal that behaving competitively is not counter-normative. At the individual level, for instance, gender differences disappear when people need to negotiate on behalf of others, a case in point when negotiating is something that a person is supposed to do (Bowles, Babcock, & McGinn, 2005). At a higher level, organizations could, for example, be more transparent about what can or cannot be negotiated, the so-called zones of negotiability (Kulik & Olekalns, 2012), specifying what terms of employment are open for discussion (Bowles, 2012). The bottom line seems to be that normalizing negotiations and negotiating behavior will diminish gender differences.

Intergroup Negotiations

Intergroup negotiations are typically conducted by representatives (Walton & McKersie, 1965)—negotiators who represent the group, pursuing not just their own personal interests but also the interests of their constituents. Representatives often negotiate more competitively than people who negotiate on their own behalf, as they tend to think that their constituency favors a competitive approach (Benton & Druckman, 1974). The extent to which representatives stick to the group norm (or what they think the groups wants) depends on their need to secure group membership. Representatives who occupy marginal positions in attractive groups seek to demonstrate their belongingness to the group, and they therefore behave more competitively toward an opposing player than representatives who hold central positions in their group (Van Kleef, Steinel, Van Knippenberg, Hogg, & Moffitt, 2007). Similarly, representatives with an insecure position in their group follow the group norm more strictly—the more so the higher their dispositional need to belong to the group (Steinel et al., 2010). Group norms, however, are not always clear. Constituencies may consist of different individuals—some are hawks, preferring a competitive stance toward the opposing group, while others are doves, favoring cooperation with the opponents. The attention-grabbing power of hawkish messages renders even a minority of hawks in a constituency more influential than doves (Aaldering & De Dreu, 2012; Steinel, De Dreu, Ouwehand, & Ramirez-Marin, 2008). Another way for constituencies to influence group negotiations is by selecting their representative, a choice that groups make depending on the purpose of the negotiation. When negotiations are identity-related (e.g., about moral issues), groups favor representatives who represent their group norms, or are more extreme than their own group, and as distant as possible from the opposing group. When negotiation are instrumental (i.e., when attaining a favorable outcome is central), however, groups prefer negotiators who deviate from the group norms in a way that brings them closer to the norms that the opposing group holds (Teixeira, Demoulin, & Yzerbyt, 2010).

Multiparty Negotiations

Multiparty negotiations differ from interactions between two negotiators in several respects. As every party brings goals, interests, and strategies to the negotiation table, group negotiations are more demanding on information-processing capacities (Beersma & De Dreu, 2002). Furthermore, team negotiations differ from dyadic negotiations, because they occur in a social environment similar to group decision-making, characterized by increased social complexity. Group dynamics depend largely on the goals that individual group members pursue—does everyone try to maximize their individual outcomes, or does the group strive to maximize collective outcomes? Groups which pursue a common goal reach more integrative agreements because they trust each other more and exchange more information than teams of people who pursue their individual goals (Weingart, Bennett, & Brett, 1993). Finally, the increased number of negotiators results in procedural and strategic complexity. A way to deal with these complexities is by installing decision rules that specify how to transform individual judgments into a group judgment. Under unanimity rule, every group member can use their veto power to make sure that their interests are recognized in an agreement. Under majority rule, however, team members whose interests are aligned can form a coalition and neglect the needs of minority members with opposed preferences, which is particularly likely and harmful to the collective outcome when group members pursue their individual goals rather than pursuing a collective goal (Beersma & De Dreu, 2002).

Team Negotiation

Team negotiation becomes increasingly complex when team members have different preferences and priorities on some of the conflict issues. Subgroup formation can occur and reduce the groups’ ability to implement beneficial trade-offs, if groups in team negotiations are not unitary teams where all members share the same preferences, but instead some team members have preferences that align better with the preferences of (some members of) the opposing group (Halevy, 2008). Subgroup conflict can also have positive effects, as it challenges fixed-pie perceptions and thus increases team members’ motivation to form an accurate understanding of the situation (Halevy, 2008).

Social Motives

Several of the studies mentioned in the section “Multiparty Negotiations” relate to one of the strongest determinants of negotiation processes and outcome—social motives (e.g., Beersma & De Dreu, 2002, De Dreu, Nijstad, & Van Knippenberg, 2008; Weingart et al., 1993). Social motives are preferences for certain distributions of value between oneself and others, which can be rooted in a person’s character (social value orientations; Van Lange, Otten, De Bruin, & Joireman, 1997) or engendered externally. A bonus system based on individual performance, for example, would give rise to individualistic motivation, while a bonus system that rewards the collective performance of a work team would spur more prosocial motivation. Pro-self negotiators aim to maximize their individual outcomes and tend to see negotiations as competitive interactions in which power and individual success are important. Prosocial negotiators, on the other hand, strive for equality and high collective gains, and tend to see negotiation as a cooperative endeavor in which fairness and morality are central (De Dreu et al., 2008).

Epistemic Motivation

The Motivated Information-Processing in Groups Model (De Dreu et al., 2008) states that win–win agreements are more likely when negotiators are prosocially motivated, because this leads to more trust, information exchange, and problem-solving behavior. Importantly, apart from a prosocial motivation, integrative agreements also require a high epistemic motivation, that is, the desire to form an accurate understanding of the situation. Negotiators with a high epistemic motivation make use of the information they exchange and find options to create value, for example by exchanging mutually beneficial concessions. Negotiators with a low epistemic motivation make suboptimal compromises instead. Epistemic motivation is fostered, for example, when negotiators are process accountable—the need to explain or justify their behavior motivates them to think carefully. Epistemic motivation is reduced, for example, when time pressure makes people prefer rules of thumb and other mental shortcuts over a careful appraisal of the available information.

Interaction among Gender, Power, and Culture

More research into dignity, honor, and face cultures and into the interaction among power, gender, and culture is needed. Commendably, in the 2000s, more and more research investigating the interaction between gender, power, and culture has been conducted. Evidence has accumulated that gender differences can be power differences in disguise (Galinsky, 2018), power differences may play out very differently depending on the culture in which the negotiation takes place, and gender roles (including acceptable and unacceptable behaviors) may differ across cultures. There are some studies investigating combinations of power and gender (Hong & Van der Wijst, 2013; Nelson, Bronstein, Shacham, & Ben-Ari, 2015), power and culture (Kopelman, Hardin, Myers, & Tost, 2016), or gender and culture (Elgoibar, Munduate, Medina, & Euwema, 2014), but a more elaborate and systematic investigation of these combinations in intra- and intercultural negotiation research is needed in our currently increasingly diversifying societies, in which men and women from all over the world need to work, and thus negotiate, with each other.

Communication Processes

Other emerging topics of research relate to communication processes during conflict and negotiation, including silences (Jared Curhan, Yeri Cho, Teng Zhang, & Yu Yang, in Hart et al., 2019), or asking questions in negotiations, in particular the willingness to ask sensitive questions (Einav Hart & Eric VanEpps, in Hart et al., 2019) or the effect of deflecting direct questions. Deflecting a direct question that a person does not want to answer (“What did you earn in your latest job?”) with a counter-question (“Would you like to offer me a job then?”) has been found to be better for interpersonal and economic outcomes than refusing to answer the question or giving an evasive answer (Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2020). The use of humor in negotiations is also under investigation. Humor can decrease the credibility of a person’s statements or disclosures, which has implications as to when a person should or should not use humor in negotiations (Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2019).

Ethics and Deception

Ethical questions that arise in negotiation are mostly related to truth-telling and deception (Lewicki et al., 2021; Robinson, Lewicki & Donahue, 2000). Deception is the topic of a growing body of research. Earlier studies focused on the antecedents of deception and found that negotiators are more likely to deceive when stakes are high (Tenbrunsel, 1998), when they know that the other negotiator lacks information (Croson, Boles, & Murnighan, 2003), when they aim to maximize their individual rather than the collective gains (O’Connor & Carnevale, 1997), when they expect their counterpart to be competitive rather than cooperative (Steinel & De Dreu, 2004), or when the counterpart is a stranger rather than a friend (Schweitzer & Croson, 1999) or angry rather than happy (Van Dijk et al., 2008). Research focus is shifting toward processes and consequences of various types of deception, such as informational or emotional deception, and, depending on whether the deception is detected, its consequences for the deceiver, the target, and third parties (Gaspar, Methasani, & Schweitzer, 2019).

Neurobiological Processes

Neurobiological processes are also increasingly becoming a focus of research. Negotiation behavior and outcomes are influenced by hormones such as oxytocin (e.g., De Dreu et al., 2010) or cortisol (e.g., Akinola, Fridman, Mor, Morris, & Crum, 2016; De Dreu & Gross, 2019; Harinck, Kouzakova, Ellemers, & Scheepers, 2018). Increased cortisol levels can be beneficial for outcomes in salary negotiation, but only when people experience their higher levels of arousal (due to higher levels of cortisol) as beneficial; otherwise, they are detrimental (Akinola et al., 2016). Other research has focused on brain activity (e.g., Weiland, Hewig, Hecht, Mussel, & Miltner, 2012) and other physiological activity such as pupil dilatation (De Dreu & Gross, 2019). Until now, most of this research has been done in relatively content-free experimental game settings (De Dreu & Gross, 2019), but gradually similar measurements are getting introduced in more naturalistic negotiation experiments (Akinola et al., 2016; Harinck et al., 2018).

Personality

Personality effects are making a comeback on the research agenda. As experiments have revealed little or no effects of various aspects of personality on negotiation behavior, “many authors have reached the conclusion that simple individual differences offer limited potential for predicting negotiation outcomes” (Bazerman et al., 2000, p. 281). In 2013, this widely held irrelevance consensus was challenged by a meta-analysis that revealed that personality traits did predict various negotiation outcome measures (Sharma et al., 2013). For example, cognitive ability predicts negotiation outcomes, and extraversion and agreeableness predict subjective outcomes. The effects of personality factors on negotiation behavior and outcomes are stronger in field settings than in laboratory experiments, as in the latter case behavioral options are restricted due to the strong demand characteristics of the situation and a focus on short-term economic outcomes in interactions between unacquainted experimental participants. Personality is more likely to affect behavior in negotiation situations that are not affected by the clearly defined norms common to laboratory studies, suggesting that the irrelevance consensus was a result of limited data (Sharma et al., 2013). More research into negotiation in naturalistic settings will help us understand how personality and situational factors interact to predict negotiation and bargaining behavior. Brett’s (2000) model, presented in Figure 3, with the terms “culture” replaced by “personality,” could serve as guiding framework for this re-emerging line of research.

Negotiation and bargaining are thriving research areas. The increasing globalization and concomitant societal developments steer research into new directions of culture and gender, while at the same time technological developments enable researchers to investigate negotiation behavior and communication in more advanced and sophisticated ways. The findings and advice that result from this research will help people across the world to deal effectively with their differences and enable them to create solutions and agreements that are profitable for all parties involved.