Psychological Bulletin Copyright 1990 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

1990, Vol. 108, No. 3,515-532 0033-2909/90/$00.75

Negotiation Behavior and Outcomes:

Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Issues
Leigh Thompson
University of Washington

This article examines the ability of the individual differences, motivational, and cognitive ap-
proaches of negotiation to account for empirical research on dyadic negotiation. Investigators have
typically focused on objective, economic measures of performance. However, social-psychological
measures are important because negotiators often do not have the information necessary to make
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

accurate judgments of the bargaining situation. Negotiators' judgments are biased, and biases are
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

associated with inefficient performance. Personality and individual differences appear to play a
minimal role in determining bargaining behavior; their impact may be dampened by several
factors, such as homogeneity of subject samples, situational constraints, and self-selection pro-
cesses. Motivational and cognitive models provide compelling accounts of negotiation behavior. A
psychological theory of negotiation should begin at the level of the individual negotiator and
should integrate features of motivational and cognitive models.

Negotiation is a pervasive and important form of social inter-
action. Negotiation is necessary whenever conflict erupts and
there are no fixed or established rules or procedures to resolve
conflict and whenever people want to search for agreement
without resorting to aggression or open fighting (Lewicki &
Litterer, 1985). Negotiation occurs in business and academic
environments and in informal social interactions such as decid-
ing with a friend or spouse where to dine or vacation. Clearly,
negotiation is essential for anyone who must interact with other
people to accomplish their objectives.
There is broad interest in the study of negotiation behavior.
This interest is evident in the interdisciplinary history of the
study of negotiation in the fields of psychology, economics,
industrial relations, organization behavior, sociology, and law.
The theoretical goal is to predict the processes and outcomes of
negotiation. The practical or applied goal is to help people nego-
tiate more effectively (Bazerman, 1986; Raiffa, 1982). The fun-
damental and enduring questions raised by the growing body of
research on negotiation behavior include the following: What
factors lead to negotiation success or failure? Which theoretical
perspective provides the best account of negotiation behavior?
What empirical findings must a theoretical approach to negoti-
ation explain? The purpose of this article is to address these
theoretical and empirical issues.
A variety of theoretical analyses of negotiation behavior have
been developed. An important theoretical distinction is that
between normative and descriptive approaches (Neale &
Northcraft, in press; Raiffa, 1982). Normative models are
based on axioms of individual rationality (cf. von Neumann &
I thank Max Bazerman and Reid Hastie for helpful comments on
drafts of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Leigh Thompson, Department of Psychology, University of Wash-
ington, Seattle, Washington 98195, or by bitnet to Ithomp-
son@max .acs.washington.edu.
515
Morgenstern, 1947) and prescribe how people should behave in
competitive situations (Cross, 1965; Harsanyi, 1956; Nash,
1950,1953). Normative models have largely been the province
of economists and game theorists (cf. Cross, 1965; Harsanyi,
1956; Nash, 1950). As Raiffa (1982) stated, "Game theorists. . .
examine what ultrasmart, impeccably rational, superpeople
should do in competitive, interactive situations. They are not
interested in the way erring folks like you and me actually be-
have, but in how we should behave if we were smarter, thought
harder, were more consistent, were all knowing" (p. 21). Nor-
mative models have advanced the understanding of conflict
behavior by providing compelling analyses of optimal or ratio-
nal behavior in competitive situations.
In addition to prescribing how negotiators should behave,
some economic models were also intended to describe the ac-
tual behavior of negotiators (Nash, 1950). However, empirical
observation indicates that normative models do not adequately
describe the behavior of most people in bargaining situations
(Neale & Bazerman, 1985a; Northcraft & Neale, in press;
Thompson & Hastie, in press). Specifically, bargainers do not
behave according to principles of normative bargaining models
and, in fact, systematically violate key principles (Bazerman &
Neale, 1983). Primarily as a response to the inadequacy of nor-
mative models to account for empirical observation, purely de-
scriptive theories of negotiation behavior have developed. De-
scriptive theories have been largely the province of psycholo-
gists and organization theorists (cf. Bazerman & Carroll, 1987;
Kelley, 1966; Pruitt & Rubin, 1986). Descriptive theories exam-
ine the influence of individual characteristics, motivations,
and cognitive processes on judgment, behavior, and outcomes
in negotiation. The focus of this article is on descriptive ac-
counts of negotiation behavior.
Because of the large volume of research on negotiation behav-
ior in many disciplines, it was necessary to restrict the scope of
this review in four ways. First, I examined negotiation or ex-
plicit bargaining (Chertkoff & Esser, 1976; Cross, 1965; Siegel &
 516 LEIGH THOMPSON
Fouraker, 1960). This definition excluded research on matrix
games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma (for reviews, see North-
craft & Neale, in press; Pruitt & Kimmel, 1977; Smith, 1987).
Pure negotiation situations differ from social dilemmas in
terms of the communication between parties, the parties' abil-
ity to make provisional offers, the veto power that each party
has on any outcome other than the disagreement outcome, and
each party's knowledge of the other's payoffs, interests, and
structure of the task (Bartos, 1972; Chertkoff & Esser, 1976;
Rapoport, 1968; Siegel & Fouraker, 1960). Second, the focus
was on two parties, or dyadic negotiation, as opposed to multi-
party negotiation involving coalitional activity (for reviews of
coalitional bargaining, see Miller & Komorita, 1986; Mur-
nighan, 1986). The review was restricted to bargains in which
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negotiators were monolithic (i.e., negotiators bargain for their
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own interests or, if representing a constituency, the constitu-
ency members have uniform interests; Raiffa, 1982). Third, I
examined three theoretical approaches: individual differences,
motivational, and cognitive models. These approaches repre-
sent the most common theoretical orientations in the study of
negotiation (Bazerman & Carroll, 1987; Neale & Northcraft, in
press). However, they do not exhaust the set of theoretical per-
spectives in negotiation.1 Finally, third-party interventions (e.g.,
mediation, arbitration) are not discussed (for reviews, see Ru-
bin, 1980; 1986; Sheppard, 1984). This review focused on the
interchange that occurs between two people attempting to re-
solve a conflict of interest.
In the sections that follow, I discuss the characteristics and
basic features of negotiation, identify economic and social-psy-
chological measures of negotiation performance, review the
major theoretical approaches to negotiation, and examine
current empirical research. I conclude by proposing a theoreti-
cal and empirical research agenda.
DEFINITION OF NEGOTIATION
Negotiation is the process whereby people attempt to settle
what each shall give and take or perform and receive in a trans-
action between them (Rubin & Brown, 1975). A negotiation
situation has five characteristics: (a) People believe that they
have conflicting interests; (b) communication is possible; (c)
intermediate solutions or compromises are possible; (d) parties
may make provisional offers and counteroffers; and (e) offers
and proposals do not determine outcomes until they are ac-
cepted by both parties (Chertkoff & Esser, 1976; Cross, 1965;
Schelling, 1960).
The basic features of negotiation include the negotiating par-
ties, their interests, the negotiation process, and the negotiation
outcome (Thompson & Hastie, 1990). A party to a negotiation
is a person (or a group of persons with common interests) who
acts in accord with his or her preferences. The interests of negoti-
ators are the preferences or utilities that each person has for the
resources to be divided (Walton & McKersie, 1965). The struc-
ture of the bargaining situation is determined by the degree of
conflict between parties' interests. Pure conflict exists when
parties' interests are perfectly negatively correlated; that is, any
outcome that increases one party's utility decreases the other
party's utility in a fixed-sum fashion. Pure conflict situations
are known as fixed-sum or purely distributive negotiations
(Walton & McKersie, 1965). Two people bargaining over the
price of a used car for which the seller wants more money and
the buyer wants to pay as little as possible is an example of a
distributive negotiation. Pure coordination situations exist
when parties' interests are perfectly compatible; increasing one
party's utility also increases the other party's utility. A negotia-
tion over an orange in which one person desires only the peel
and the other desires only the juice is an example (Follett,
1940). In empirical investigations, researchers typically do not
examine bargaining in pure coordination situations, although
interesting questions concern whether negotiators are able to
realize when their interests are compatible with those of an-
other (Hammond, Stewart, Brehmer, & Steinmann, 1975;
Thompson & Hastie, in press). Sometimes parties' interests are
neither completely opposed nor purely compatible. Such situa-
tions are known as variable-sum or integrative negotiations
(Walton & McKersie, 1965).2 In integrative bargaining situa-
tions, the gains of one party do not represent equal sacrifices by
the other. Pruitt (1986) gave the example of a couple in conflict
over where to spend a vacation. The husband prefers a cabin in
the mountains; the wife prefers a luxury hotel on the seashore.
The husband is primarily concerned with location; the wife is
primarily concerned with accommodations. An integrative
agreement is reached when the couple agree to vacation in a
luxury hotel in the mountains. Many researchers contend that
most negotiation situations are integrative (Pruitt & Rubin,
1986; Raiffa, 1982; Walton & McKersie, 1965). Although there
is no empirical evidence to support this contention, two logical
arguments support it. The deductive argument is that two peo-
ple are more likely to have different priorities, risk preferences,
and valuations of resources than they are likely to have identi-
cal preferences across such dimensions. Differences on any di-
mension define opportunities for integrative trade-offs (Raiffa,
1982). The inductive argument is based on the large volume of
case studies of negotiation situations in which opportunities for
integrative agreements have been identified (Lax & Sebenius,
1985).
The negotiation process is the interaction that occurs be-
tween parties before the outcome. Negotiation processes in-
clude communication between bargainers and behavioral en-
actments of bargaining strategies. The negotiation outcome is
the product of the bargaining situation. Negotiations may end
in impasse (i.e., the parties fail to reach a mutually acceptable
agreement) or in mutual agreement. In integrative and pure
coordination situations, outcomes that result in mutual agree-
ment may be examined in terms of the efficiency of the out-
come. A negotiation outcome is said to be efficient or pareto
optimal if there does not exist some other feasible solution or set
of solutions that would improve the utility of one or both par-
ties while not hurting either party (Nash, 1950). Finally, negotia-
1
At least two other approaches have been acknowledged: a commu-
nications approach and a structural approach (for reviews, see Chat-
man & Sondak, in press; Neale & Northcraft, in press). In general,
these approaches are more piecemeal and less well developed than
those reviewed in this article.
2
Technically, the label integrative also includes purely compatible
situations. In this discussion, integrative refers to situations character-
ized by a partial conflict of interest.
 NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES
tion outcomes are also examined in terms of the distribution of
resources among bargainers.
MEASURES OF NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR
Measures of behavior and performance in negotiation may
be grouped into two general categories: economic and social-
psychological measures. Economic measures focus on the out-
comes or products of the negotiation and are derived from ax-
ioms of individual rationality and normative analyses of negoti-
ation behavior (Nash, 1953). Social-psychological measures
focus on both the processes and the outcomes of negotiation
and are based on elements and processes of social perception
(Thompson & Hastie, 1990). Of course, social-psychological
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measures may influence economic measures of performance,
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and vice versa. The measures are distinguished here because
many research programs have not included both in their analy-
ses, and comparative analyses of behavior are difficult when
investigators use different measures of performance. Appar-
ently inconclusive results and even contradictory findings may
often be traced to different measures of performance. The key
distinction is one of perspective: Negotiators typically do not
perform a full, rational analysis of the negotiation situation
either because the relevant information is not available or be-
cause they ignore or distort information (Thompson & Hastie,
1990). Negotiators' perceptions may differ substantially from
objective economic analyses (Thompson & Hastie, in press).
Economic Measures
Economic measures are based on axioms of individual utility
usually attributed to von Neumann and Morgenstern (1947)
and on Bayesian Decision Theory (deGroot, 1970) and repre-
sent the most well-formulated specifications of optimal negotia-
tion performance. Economic measures are primarily axiom-
atic; that is, they focus on the outcomes or products of negotia-
tion and do not specify the processes or methods necessary or
sufficient to yield such outcomes. Three measures of perfor-
mance are specified by normative bargaining models (Nash,
1953).
Mutual Agreement
According to most economic bargaining models, negotiators
should reach a mutual agreement if the alternative (known as
the disagreement outcome) is worse than what they could
achieve through agreement with the other party.3 Simply stated,
negotiators should reach an agreement with the other party if it
is in both their interests to do so. The utility of a mutual agree-
ment is determined by the zone of agreement defined by negoti-
ators' reservation prices (Raiffa, 1982). A negotiator's reserva-
tion price represents the minimum that he or she will settle for;
anything less represents an outcome that is worse than the dis-
agreement outcome. Simply put, an individual's reservation
price is the point at which he or she can achieve equal or greater
utility by engaging in another course of action (e.g., dealing with
another party or simply maintaining the status quo).4 Bargain-
ing zones may be positive or negative (Raiffa, 1982; Walton &
McKersie, 1965). A positive bargaining zone exists if negotia-
517
tors' reservation prices overlap; a negative bargaining zone ex-
ists if negotiators' reservation prices do not overlap. When a
positive bargaining zone exists, both negotiators gain from mu-
tual agreement; when a negative bargaining zone exists, negotia-
tors do not profit from mutual agreement. For example, if a
buyer's reservation price, or maximum amount that he or she is
willing to pay for a used car is $700 and the seller's reservation
price, or the minimum amount that he or she is willing to
accept is $600, a positive bargaining zone exists. A negative
bargaining zone would exist if the buyer's reservation price was
$600 and the seller's reservation price was $700.
Creating Resources: Integrative Bargaining
When negotiators' interests are not purely competitive, nego-
tiation involves not just dividing resources (distributive bar-
gaining) but identifying additional value, benefits, and re-
sources (integrative bargaining). The economic definition of
integrative bargaining is precise and refers to whether nego-
tiated outcomes are efficient, or pareto optimal. In empirical
examinations of negotiation behavior, researchers have used
different operationalizations of this economic definition. Typi-
cally, negotiators' outcomes are summed to form a measure of
joint profit, which is used as a measure of integration.5 Integra-
tive agreements allow negotiators to achieve greater utility, al-
low negotiators to avoid potential stalemates, are more stable
over time, foster harmonious relations between parties, and
contribute to the welfare of the broader community (Pruitt &
Rubin, 1986). Pruitt (1983; Pruitt & Rubin, 1986) identified
several strategies for reaching integrative agreements, including
logrolling, in which negotiators make trade-offs between issues
so that each party gets all or most of his or her preferred out-
come on important issues but concedes on issues of little im-
portance (Froman & Cohen, 1970). Thompson and Hastie (in
press) noted that negotiators may reach integrative agreements
by identifying compatible issues. Compatible issues are issues
for which negotiators have similar preferences.
Claiming Resources: Distributive Bargaining
All negotiation situations, except those in which parties have
completely compatible interests, involve a distributive compo-
3
This is generally true, but subtleties arise depending upon the par-
ticular task. For example, Myerson (1987) proved that impasses occur
even when there are gains to trade when bargainers do not have com-
plete information.
4
Whereas it is generally assumed that reservation prices are stable
and exogenously determined (e.g., they do not change as a result of the
bargaining process), other closely related concepts, such as compari-
son level for alternatives (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959), minimum necessary
share (Kelley, Beckman, & Fischer, 1967), reservation points (Walton
& McKersie, 1965), and minimum disposition (Ikle & Leites, 1962) are
more labile.
5
Lax and Sebenius (1987) argued that joint profit is not an especially
sensitive measure of integration and developed a measure, called the
integrative quotient, that measures the distance of the outcome from
the pareto optimal frontier. The few researchers who have used this
measure have reported high correlations between this measure and the
typical measure of joint profit (Weingart, Thompson, Bazerman, &
Carroll, 1990).
 518 LEIGH THOMPSON
nent (Lax & Sebenius, 1985). The distributive component re-
flects the primary motivation of negotiators: to maximize their
utility.6 A fundamental task for the negotiator is to divide re-
sources in such a manner that he or she keeps most of the
bargaining surplus. The bargaining surplus is the difference
between one's reservation price and the final settlement
(Raiffa, 1982; Walton & McKersie, 1965).
Social-Psychological Measures
Social-psychological measures of negotiation performance
are based on concepts of social perception (Allport, 1955). The
elements of social perception include most aspects of per-
ceivers' social worlds: people, their behaviors, and contexts or
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situations (Schneider, Hastorf, & Ellsworth, 1979). The most
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important elements of social perception in negotiation are nego-
tiators' perceptions of the bargaining situation, the other party
or bargaining opponent, and themselves (Thompson & Hastie,
1990).
The key principles of social perception can be summarized
as list of principles or features (Schneider et al, 1979; Shaver,
1987). People actively perceive their social world by selecting,
categorizing, interpreting, and inferring information. For exam-
ple, negotiators do not know what the interests of the other
party are but instead make inferences about their opponent
(Hammond et al, 1975; Harsanyi, 1962). In some sense, negotia-
tors may not be aware of their own interests and values (Fisch-
hoff, Slovic, & Lichtenstein, 1980; March, 1978) but rely on
cues to guide their behavior and choice (Bern, 1967). The per-
ception process is constructive and selective; that is, perception
is influenced by the salience of information and the order in
which information is presented, as well as by perceivers' expec-
tations, knowledge, and experience. Finally, people's percep-
tions influence their behavior.
The principles of social perception have special implications
for negotiation situations. In most bargaining situations, negoti-
ators do not have the information necessary to perform an ob-
jective analysis of the bargaining situation. Consequently, nego-
tiators' perceptions of the bargaining situation may be quite
different from that provided by an objective economic analysis
(Bazerman & Carroll, 1987; Thompson & Hastie, 1990, in
press). Negotiators' perceptions may not only differ from objec-
tive analyses but may also differ from those of the other party.
Thus two people involved in the same conflict may have differ-
ent perceptions about the basis of conflict (Hammond et al.,
1975; Pinkley, 1990). People may perceive a conflict of interest
when in fact none exists, or they may fail to perceive conflict
when it does exist (Hammond, et al., 1975; Thompson & Has-
tie, in press). A number of cognitive and motivational heuristics
have been found to disturb the accuracy of social information
processing in a variety of domains (Fiske & Taylor, 1984; Mar-
kus & Zajonc, 1985), and similar heuristics have been found to
bias judgment and affect behavior in negotiation (Bazerman &
Neale, 1983; Thompson & Hastie, 1990, in press).
Perceptions of the Negotiation Situation
Perceptions of negotiation situations involve the judgments
that people make about the bargaining process and outcome.
Negotiators' judgments of the fairness of the procedures and
outcomes of negotiation and their expectations and perceived
norms concerning appropriate behavior are examples of social
perception in negotiation (Schelling, 1960; Thibaut & Walker,
1975; Tyler, 1986). Negotiators' perceptions of bargaining situa-
tions are influenced by their implicit theories of bargaining,
conflict, and negotiation (Carroll & Payne, in press). These
mental structures are typically represented as lists of features or
as temporal sequences of events, or scripts, with specific fea-
tures, variables, and default values (Abelson, 1976). Bazerman
and Carroll (1987) described several examples of bargaining
scripts, such as "the car-buying script," "the bidding war script,"
and so forth. Negotiators' perceptions of bargaining situation
also include their views of the structure of the bargaining task:
purely competitive, cooperative, or integrative (Thompson &
Hastie, 1990). Pinkley (1990) noted that negotiators' percep-
tions of conflict are multidimensional and may be character-
ized by three bipolar dimensions, or "conflict frames": relation-
ship-task, emotional-intellectual, and compromise-win.
Perceptions of the Other Party
Perceptions of one's negotiation opponent include many of
the processes and elements associated with the more general
process of person perception and impression formation. An
important and powerful aspect of person perception is evalua-
tion or liking (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). Relevant
dimensions in negotiation include negotiators' liking and at-
traction to the other party and their perceptions of the other
party's trustworthiness and fairness. Perceptions of the other
party include the trait inferences that negotiators make about
the other party's intelligence, sociability, expertise, skill, ability,
cooperativeness, and competitiveness. Perceptions of the other
party also include the attributions that negotiators make to ex-
plain the behavior of their bargaining opponent and the predic-
tions they make about the opponent's future behavior. Percep-
tions of the other party include negotiators' behavioral inten-
tions, such as their willingness to interact with the other party
in the future. Perceptions of the other party are hypothesized to
be mentally represented in memory as a person or role schema
(Taylor & Crocker, 1981), in which a person node with the label
associated with the opponent is connected to a list of features or
characteristics describing the person (Bazerman & Carroll,
1987; Hastie & Kumar, 1979).
Perceptions of the Self
Perceptions of the self include many of the dimensions rele-
vant to perceptions of the bargaining opponent, such as skill,
cooperativeness, fairness, and so forth. Self-perceptions also
include negotiators' judgments of their own interests, values,
goals, and risk preferences (Fischhoff et al., 1980); social com-
parisons between the self and the other party (Zechmeister &
6
In most cases, the maximization of utility is assumed to be equiva-
lent to maximizing one's own gains. Most economic models assume
that people seek to maximize their own gain. However, some descrip-
tive approaches do not assume that negotiators' goals are to maximize
self-gain.
 NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES
Druckman, 1973); self-evaluations; and self-presentational
concerns (Brown, 1968; Hiltrop & Rubin, 1981; Pruitt & John-
son, 1970). The hypothesized mental structures used to repre-
sent self-perceptions are self-schemata (Markus, 1977).
THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND MODELS
Most descriptive theories and approaches of negotiation be-
havior may be classified into one of three broad domains: indi-
vidual differences, motivational, and cognitive models (Bazer-
man & Carroll, 1987; Carroll & Payne, in press; Neale & North-
craft, in press). I now describe each approach and examine
empirical research on economic and social-psychological mea-
sures of performance.
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Individual Differences Approach
The individual differences approach is an attempt to identify
stable characteristics of people that reliably affect their bar-
gaining behavior and performance. The individual differences
approach does not represent a single, well-established theory.
Rather, it is a collection of disparate hypotheses, predictions,
and low-level theoretical statements. Two general classes of the-
oretical models characterize the individual difference ap-
proach: direct-effect models and contingency models. Accord-
ing to direct-effect models, individual differences directly influ-
ence social behavior. The hypothesis that women perceive
conflict differently than do men is an example of a direct-effect
model (Pinkley & Northcraft, 1989). In empirical research, in-
vestigators commonly use standardized personality assessment
techniques to measure characteristics of negotiators. Individual
differences that have received the most attention in the negotia-
tion literature include relationship orientation (Machiavellian-
ism; cooperative-competitive orientation); cognitive ability
(cognitive complexity; perspective-taking ability), and gender/
sex role orientation (Rubin & Brown, 1975).7 These characteris-
tics are the primary focus of my analysis.
According to contingency models, negotiation behavior is
determined by specific characteristics of persons and particu-
lar features of the situation. Situational factors in contingency
models have included communication modality and the pres-
ence or absence of bargaining constituents (Zechmeister &
Druckman, 1973). The hypothesis that a Machiavellian bar-
gainer will take advantage of a non-Machiavellian bargaining
opponent when the interaction occurs face to face, but not
when a barrier obstructs their visual contact, is an example of a
contingency model (Fry, 1985). In the next section, research
studies on the impact of individual differences on economic
and social-psychological measures of performance are dis-
cussed.
Economic Criteria
Mutual Agreement
Fry (1985) proposed a contingency model relationship be-
tween negotiator Machiavellianism and visual accessibility. Fry
reasoned that "low-Machiavellian" bargainers would be
aroused by and distracted in the presence of "high-" but not
low-Machiavellian bargaining opponents. Fry paired low-low,
519
high-high, and low-high Machiavellian people and allowed
some to bargain face to face; others bargained through a barrier
that obstructed visual contact. Fry hypothesized that the low-
high pairs negotiating face to face would be most likely to fail to
reach agreement because the low-Machiavellian bargainer
would be susceptible to the strong emotional appeals advanced
by the high-Machiavellian bargainer. The hypothesis was sup-
ported. Failure to reach mutual agreement was attributed to the
low-Machiavellian bargainer, who suggested significantly fewer
potential solutions when negotiating face to face with a high-
Machiavellian bargainer.
Joint Outcomes
Cognitive ability. Integrative bargaining situations often re-
quire problem-solving behaviors to maximize joint gain
(Pruitt, 1983; Pruitt & Rubin, 1986). This analysis has led some
researchers to speculate that cognitive reasoning ability may
facilitate the problem-solving behavior necessary to reach inte-
grative outcomes. Pruitt and Lewis (1975) hypothesized that
cognitively complex negotiators entertain more alternative con-
ceptions of bargaining situations and gather and integrate more
information during bargaining. Therefore, cognitively complex
negotiators should be more likely to find mutually beneficial
solutions than would less cognitively complex negotiators. How-
ever, this hypothesis was not supported. Neale and Bazerman
(1983) examined another measure of cognitive functioning:
perspective-taking ability (Davis, 1981). They hypothesized
that failure to understand one's bargaining opponent is a pri-
mary cause of suboptimal negotiation performance. However,
perspective-taking ability did not affect joint performance, as
measured by the number of issues resolved.
Gender. Other researchers have hypothesized that the sex
composition of the dyad may affect integrative bargaining out-
comes (Kimmel, Pruitt, Magenau, Konar-Goldband, & Carne-
vale, 1980; Rubin & Brown, 1975; Turnbull, Strickland, &
Shaver, 1976). For example, Kimmel et al. (1980) hypothesized
that men seek to maximize their own gains, whereas women
respond to the interpersonal aspect of the situation. However,
there was no support for this prediction.
Individual Outcomes
Machiavellianism. In general, Machiavellian bargainers
claim more resources than do non-Machiavellian bargainers
(Fry, 1985; Huber & Neale, 1986). According to Fry's (1985)
analysis, low-Machiavellian negotiators lose to high-Machiavel-
lian negotiators because they are susceptible to the arousing,
emotional appeals put forth by high-Machiavellian bargainers.
However, Greenhalgh and Neslin (1983) found that Machiavel-
lian bargainers performed worse than non-Machiavellians. The
negotiation task and measures of individual performance used
by Greenhalgh and Neslin differed in many respects from the
ones used by Fry and by Huber and Neale, and so this apparent
7
In many analyses of individual differences, such as Kelley and Sta-
helski's (1970) study of cooperators and competitors, researchers have
used the Prisoner's Dilemma paradigm, and those studies are not cov-
ered in this review.
 520 LEIGH THOMPSON
inconsistency may be attributable partly to the task. These re-
sults also suggest that trait Machiavellianism may not directly
influence negotiation behavior but may instead interact with
situational and task constraints to influence performance.
Cognitive ability. Cognitive reasoning skills have been pre-
dicted to increase negotiators' ability to claim resources. For
example, Neale and Bazerman (1983) reasoned that negotiators
with high perspective-taking ability would be able to persuade
their opponents to settle close to their reservation price and
therefore claim most of the bargaining surplus for themselves.
Results supported the hypothesis: Negotiators with high per-
spective-taking ability earned higher outcomes than did those
with low perspective-taking ability. Neale and Bazerman con-
cluded that bargainers with high perspective-taking ability are
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able to learn more information about their opponent, which
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
allows them to accurately assess their opponent's goals, expec-
tations, and reservation price. However, Greenhalgh and Nes-
lin (1983) found that perspective-taking ability was not predic-
tive of individual utility. Again, the task and the dependent
measure of performance were different from those used by
Neale and Bazerman. The impact of perspective-taking ability
on performance may depend in part on the particular bargain-
ing situation.
Social-Psychological Measures
Investigators of individual differences on social-psychologi-
cal measures have primarily explored the direct effects of
gender and sex role orientation on perceptions.
Perceptions of the Bargaining Situation
Although there is no clear evidence suggesting that men are
more or less effective negotiators than are women, men may
perceive conflict differently than do women (Gilkey & Green-
halgh, 1984; Pinkley, 1990; Zechmeister & Druckman, 1973).
In general, men are more concerned with winning and maxi-
mizing their outcomes, whereas women are more concerned
with maintaining the relationship. For example, Pinkley found
that women were more likely than men to interpret a conflict
situation in relationship terms, whereas men were more con-
cerned with the exchange of resources. Zechmeister and
Druckman (1973) reported that men rated "coming out favor-
ably" as more important than did women.
Perceptions of the Opponent
Women tend to perceive their opponents as similar to them-
selves, whereas men perceive themselves as fundamentally dif-
ferent from their opponents (Gilkey & Greenhalgh, 1984; Zech-
meister & Druckman, 1973). Zechmeister and Druckman
(1973) found that women rated themselves as more similar to
their opponents in terms of attitudes toward racial problems
(the subject of the negotiations) after negotiation than did men;
Gilkey and Greenhalgh (1984) measured negotiators' sex role
orientations and found that "feminine" negotiators were more
empathic than were "masculine" negotiators.
Perceptions of the Self
There is some evidence for sex differences in terms of negotia-
tors' evaluations of their own performance (Kimmel et al.,
1980; Turnbull et al., 1976). Women engage in more self-deroga-
tion during negotiation than do men (Kimmel et al, 1980).
Men perceive themselves as more powerful than do women
(Turnbull et al, 1976). Again, although men evaluate them-
selves more favorably than women evaluate themselves, there is
no clear evidence suggesting that men actually perform better
than women.
Discussion
On the basis of the studies examined in this review, there is
some suggestion that certain individual differences may be re-
lated to bargaining behavior. The clearest relationships appear
among cognitive reasoning ability and individual performance
and among gender and perceptions of negotiation. However,
these conclusions are based on a small number of studies and
should therefore be viewed as tentative. A further caveat is that
researchers have not been consistent in their reporting of sex
differences; many report sex difference effects as a secondary
analysis. The implication is that in a large number of studies,
the researchers also performed secondary analysis and did not
find or did not report null results for gender.
The scant number of clear relationships observed in this re-
view is consistent with Hamner's (1980) conclusion that there
are few significant relationships between personality and nego-
tiation outcomes. Some researchers have even stated this more
forcefully: "From what is known now, it does not appear that
there is any single personality type or characteristic that is di-
rectly and clearly linked to success in negotiation" (Lewicki &
Litterer, 1985, p. 276). However, this conclusion is incomplete
and overly simplistic. It is only reasonable to assume that indi-
vidual characteristics influence bargaining behavior. People ex-
hibit a great deal of consistency across situations, and this sug-
gests that personality is an important influence on social behav-
ior (Staw & Ross, 1985).
So, why do individual differences not appear to play a central
role in experimental investigations of negotiation? There are
several possible explanations (Lewicki & Litterer, 1985). First,
individual differences are often measured with a homogeneous
sample of subjects, usually college students. The failure to ob-
serve relationships between individual differences and bargain-
ing behavior may be attributed partially to the narrow range of
individual differences within subject populations (Hamner,
1980). A second possibility concerns the assessment of individ-
ual differences. Most individual differences are assessed by
means of paper-and-pencil measures. However, the key depen-
dent variables of interest in negotiation are typically behavioral
measures of performance. Given the inconsistency between at-
titudes and behavior and the unreliability of self-report mea-
sures, behavioral assessment of individual differences may
yield more reliable and consistent relationships with social be-
havior (Staw & Ross, 1985). A third explanation is that other
factors may outweigh the more subtle effects of personality in
bargaining (Davis-Blake & Pfeffer, 1989). Monson, Hesley, and
Chernick (1982) suggested that personality is more predictive
 NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES
of behavior in ambiguous situations than in settings in which
there are strong prescriptions for behavior. Fourth, personality
may not exert main effects on negotiation performance but
rather may interact in complex ways with situational factors
and characteristics of the particular task (Fry, 1985; Harnett,
Cummings, & Hughes, 1968). This alternative suggests that a
contingency approach may have more predictive validity than a
direct-effect model. Fifth, the absence of a comprehensive
theory relating individual differences to negotiation behavior
makes it difficult to identify clear relationships. Finally, it may
be that individual characteristics of bargainers exert their im-
pact on prenegotiation behaviors—that is, factors that predis-
pose people to avoid or engage in negotiation, rather than on
bargaining behavior per se (Emmons & Diener, 1986). In this
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sense, individual differences act as an important self-selection
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process in negotiation that is not captured by extant measures
of negotiation behavior and performance.
Motivational Approaches
Motivational models of bargaining behavior examine the in-
fluence of aspirations and goals on bargaining behavior and
outcomes. Two general theoretical approaches have developed
within this broad area. According to one approach, aspiration
is a continuous, unidimensional concept ranging from low to
high (Hamner & Harnett, 1975; Siegel & Fouraker, 1960). Aspi-
ration is denned in terms of utility theory, and a negotiator's
aspiration level is represented as a position on his or her bar-
gaining utility function (Siegel, 1957). In general, the member
of the bargaining pair who has a higher level of aspiration ob-
tains a larger share of the joint profit (Siegel & Fouraker, 1960).
Negotiators with high aspirations make smaller concessions,
make larger demands, take longer to reach agreement, and earn
higher profits than do negotiators with low aspirations (Siegel &
Fouraker, 1960).
The second approach differs from aspiration-level theories
by positing that bargaining goals are not unidimensional and
that the maximization of gain is not the primary goal of bar-
gaining (Blake & Mouton, 1962; Pruitt & Rubin, 1986). Accord-
ing to the Dual Concern Model (Pruitt & Rubin, 1986), negotia-
tors' goals are determined by two independent factors: negotia-
tors' concern for themselves and their concern for the other
party. This approach also differs from aspiration-level theories
in that utility functions are not continuous but are modeled as
discrete functions. In the model, concern is either high or low
for each factor (self; other party), and the resulting product is a
four-cell matrix specifying the strategies associated with each
goal orientation. A key prediction of the Dual Concern Model
is that negotiators who have a high degree of concern for them-
selves coupled with a high degree of concern for the other party
will reach more integrative outcomes than will negotiators who
are concerned only with maximizing their own outcomes, nego-
tiators who are concerned only with the other party, and negotia-
tors who are not concerned with themselves or the other party.
Economic Criteria
Mutual Agreement
A key prediction of aspiration-level models is that high aspira-
tions block opportunities for mutual agreement and increase
521
the likelihood of an impasse. Two separate lines of evidence
support this prediction: studies of constituency pressure and
explicit goal setting.
Constituency pressure. The first line of support is based on
studies in which researchers examined aspirations indirectly,
typically by manipulating the amount of constituency pressure
on bargainers (Carnevale, Pruitt, & Britton, 1979). The hypoth-
esis is that negotiators who represent a larger group or constitu-
ency feel accountable to their constituency and pressured to
meet their goals and, consequently, adopt higher aspiration lev-
els and remain firmer in their aspirations than do negotiators
who are not under constituency pressure (Neale, 1984; Pruitt &
Lewis, 1975; Tjosvold, 1977). Tjosvold (1977) found that negoti-
ators under constituency pressure to maximize gains were
more likely to reach impasses than were those whose constitu-
encies encouraged them to reach a fair outcome. In a similar
study, Neale (1984) told some negotiators that their outcomes
would be determined by evaluations of their performance that
were made by constituency members (high constituency-pres-
sure group); others were not told that their outcomes were con-
tingent on constituency evaluations (low constituency-pressure
group). Impasses occurred more often when constituency pres-
sure was high.
Explicit goal setting. The second line of support is based on
studies in which researchers attempted to manipulate negotia-
tors' aspirations by providing them with a specific goal or tar-
get value to achieve. Most of this research has been conducted
using the experimental bargaining market paradigm (cf. Bazer-
man, Magliozzi, & Neale, 1985). In experimental bargaining
markets, several buyers and sellers interact under the instruc-
tion that they should complete as many profitable negotiations
as possible in a fixed amount of time. Negotiators are given a
specific goal to achieve in the negotiation. This is typically
operationalized by instructing negotiators to meet or exceed a
given payoff level. In general, negotiators who are given spe-
cific, challenging, or demanding goals complete fewer success-
ful transactions than do those not given challenging goals (Ba-
zerman et al, 1985; Huber & Neale, 1987; Neale & Bazerman,
1985a, 1985b; Neale, Northcraft, & Barley, 1988). One explana-
tion of this finding is that negotiators with high aspirations
have more unsuccessful transactions (i.e, reach more impasses)
than do negotiators with lower aspirations. However, an equally
plausible interpretation is that negotiators with high aspirations
do not make as many attempts to negotiate as do those with low
aspirations, perhaps because negotiators with high aspirations
spend a longer time negotiating (Neale & Bazerman, 1985b).
Unfortunately, the number of transactions attempted, the num-
ber actually completed, and the time to complete them were
not reported; so it is not possible to determine whether high
aspirations are related to higher impasse rates or simply fewer
attempts to negotiate. If high aspirations lead to more frequent
impasses, a central question concerns the mechanism involved:
Specifically, do high aspirations prevent negotiators from dis-
covering viable agreements, or are negotiators with high aspira-
tions more reluctant to agree to proposals that barely exceed
their reservation price (cf. Kelley et al, 1967)? Stated another
way, do bargainers become committed to positions and refuse
to move away from their demands, or are bargainers reluctant
to adopt feasible solutions?
 522 LEIGH THOMPSON
Dual Concern Model. The Dual Concern Model (Pruitt &
Rubin, 1986) suggests that the relationship between aspiration
and bargaining outcomes is more complex and requires consid-
eration of negotiators' concern for the other party in addition to
their own level of aspiration. According to the Dual Concern
Model, high concern for oneself coupled with low concern for
the other party increases the likelihood of an impasse because
both parties will engage in contentious behavior rather than the
problem-solving behavior hypothesized to be necessary for in-
tegrative agreement. In contrast, negotiators who have high aspi-
rations coupled with concern for the other party should be
more likely to engage in problem solving that results in mutual
agreement (Pruitt & Rubin, 1986). The empirical evidence
bearing on this hypothesis is mixed. Two studies have found
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clear support for the model's predictions (Carnevale & Lawler,
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1986; Pruitt & Lewis, 1975). For example, Pruitt and Lewis
(1975) manipulated negotiators' aspirations by instructing
them to meet or exceed either a high or a low payoff; they
manipulated concern for the other party by instructing negotia-
tors to adopt either an individualistic or a cooperative orienta-
tion. Negotiators with high aspirations and individualistic ori-
entations were most likely to reach an impasse. Two direct tests
of the model were equivocal: The effects were in the predicted
direction, but not significant (Ben Yoav & Pruitt, 1984a, 1984b).
One study did not support the predictions of the model (Pruitt,
Carnevale, BenYoay, Nochajski, & Van Slyck, 1982).
Whereas "concern" for the other party per se does not consis-
tently influence the likelihood of impasse, negotiators do
appear to be sensitive to overt attempts by the other party
to exploit or manipulate them. For example, Cruder (1971)
found that negotiators who bargained with "exploitative" oppo-
nents—people who misrepresented their reservation price—
were more likely to reach an impasse than were negotiators who
bargained with "fair" opponents. Tjosvold (1978) similarly
found that negotiators who interacted with a partner who indi-
cated an intention to control rather than collaborate were more
likely to reach an impasse.
Joint Outcomes
Explicit goal setting. The research on explicit goal setting is
derived from aspiration-level theories (Siegel & Fouraker,
1960). In general, higher aspirations are predicted to lead to
greater joint profit. The reasoning is that negotiators with high
aspirations are more likely to explore ways of maximizing their
outcomes because simple compromises do not satisfy their
goals, whereas negotiators with low aspirations are more likely
to settle for obvious solutions yielding low joint payoffs (Kelley
& Schenitzki, 1972). In some experiments, negotiators are given
a specific payofflevel or target value to achieve, others are given
lower targets, and a control group that is not given a target value
or goal instruction is often included. In general, negotiators
with high target levels are more likely to reach integrative agree-
ments (Bazerman et al., 1985; Huber & Neale, 1986,1987; Mc-
Alister, Bazerman & Fader, 1986; Neale & Bazerman, 1985b;
Neale & Northcraft, 1986; Neale, Northcraft, & Early, 1988;
Scholz, Fleischer, & Bentpup, 1982). However, there is an im-
portant qualification. Explicit goals increase the profitability
of negotiation outcomes as well as the time required to com-
plete negotiation transactions, which results in fewer transac-
tions completed within a fixed amount of time (Neale & Bazer-
man, 1985b). Thus a curvilinear relationship between goal dif-
ficulty and total profitability exists when total profitability is
the product of the number and the value of completed transac-
tions. Again, this is an instance in which apparently contradic-
tory findings may be traced to different measures of perfor-
mance.
Dual Concern Model. According to the Dual Concern
Model, the relationship between goals and outcomes is more
complex and requires consideration of negotiators' attitudes to-
ward the other party (Pruitt & Rubin, 1986). The prediction is
that high aspirations will increase joint outcomes only when
the negotiator is concerned with the interests of the other party.
The first empirical examination bearing on this hypothesis (al-
though not intended as a test of the model) was a study in which
negotiators were instructed either to maximize their own gains
(individualistic orientation) or to maximize joint gains (team
orientation; Kelley & Schenitzki, 1972). Furthermore, negotia-
tors were told that their monetary payoffs would depend either
on their own outcomes or on the joint amount of resources
achieved. The paradoxical result was that negotiators with an
individualistic orientation achieved higher joint outcomes than
did those with a team orientation. However, this effect was
obtained only when negotiators communicated through writ-
ten messages; the effect disappeared when negotiators commu-
nicated face to face. Schulz and Pruitt (1978) hypothesized that
negotiators with a team orientation would reach higher joint
outcomes if given an opportunity to divulge information about
their interests—something they were not allowed to do in Kel-
ley and Schenitzki's study. Negotiators were instructed to adopt
either an individualistic or a team orientation; some pairs com-
municated freely, and others were restricted to truthful infor-
mation exchange. In contrast to Kelley and Schenitzki's find-
ing, and in support of the Dual Concern Model, negotiators
with a team orientation achieved higher joint profits than did
pairs with individualistic orientations; the communication
conditions did not affect joint profitability.
In subsequent studies, Pruitt and his colleagues have tested
predictions of the Dual Concern Model by independently ma-
nipulating negotiators' concern for themselves and concern for
the other party. They manipulated concern for the self by in-
forming negotiators that they were accountable to a larger con-
stituency (Ben-Yoav & Pruitt, 1984b) or by providing negotiators
with an explicit goal to reach (Ben-%av & Pruitt, 1984a). They
operationalized concern for the other party by providing negoti-
ators with a small gift (Carnevale & Isen, 1986; Pruitt et al.,
1982), leading some negotiators to expect cooperative future
interaction with their opponent (Ben-Yoav & Pruitt, 1984a,
1984b), or by encouraging negotiators to adopt a cooperative
orientation (Carnevale & Lawler, 1986). The prediction that
high concern for oneself coupled with high concern for the
other party leads to higher joint outcomes has generally been
supported (Ben-Yoav & Pruitt, 1984a, 1984b).
Individual Outcomes
Aspirations also improve distributive bargaining behavior.
Bargainers who have specific, explicit goals achieve higher indi-
 NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES
vidual outcomes than do bargainers not given explicit goals to
achieve (Huber & Neale, 1986,1987; McAlister et al, 1986)."
One complication with providing negotiators with an explicit
goal is that the goal may not be adopted by the subject or the
goal may provide clues to subjects about the structure of the
negotiation task. Simply put, a negotiator who is told to maxi-
mize joint gain rather than individual gain may realize that the
experimenter's game does not contain a fixed amount of re-
sources. Similarly, the bargainer who is instructed to try to earn
a large amount of profits may similarly (and accurately) reason
that there may be more resources available than a fixed-sum
situation would dictate. One solution to these cuing problems is
to measure goals, rather than to manipulate goals. For example,
Hamner and Harnett (1975) measured negotiators' aspirations
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and found that bargainers with higher aspirations were more
successful than were those with lower aspirations.
Social Psychological Measures
A small number of researchers have examined the implica-
tions of constituency pressure on negotiators' perceptions of
bargaining. In general, constituency pressure is hypothesized
to increase negotiators' aspirations (Carnevale et al, 1979).
Perceptions of the Bargaining Situation
Negotiators under constituency pressure view bargaining sit-
uations as more competitive and less productive than do bar-
gainers who do not represent a constituency or at least do not
feel pressured to maximize profits for a constituency (Druck-
man & Zechmeister, 1973; Tjosvold, 1977; Zechmeister &
Druckman, 1973). Negotiators whose constituencies pressure
them to maximize individual profits report less willingness to
compromise, fewer efforts to be just, and fewer feelings of gen-
erosity than do negotiators whose constituencies are committed
to "justice" (Tjosvold, 1977). Negotiators who confer with their
constituency to formulate arguments before negotiation are
more likely to view negotiation as a win-lose, competitive en-
terprise than are negotiators who spend time with members of
the other party before negotiation (Druckman & Zechmeister,
1973). Thus constituency pressure in the form of sanctions and
evaluations reduces the bargainer's perception of personal con-
trol and satisfaction with the bargaining process, but it does not
necessarily hinder the quality of the economic outcomes and
may even improve performance when constituents provide ne-
gotiators with specific goals to achieve.
Perceptions of the Other Party
Tjosvold (1977) found that negotiators under pressure from
their constituencies to maximize gains perceived themselves as
more dissimilar to their opponents than did negotiators who
were not under pressure to maximize gains.
Discussion
Aspirations play an important role in determining bargain-
ing behavior and performance. The research findings are clear
but complex: Higher aspirations increase profitability but de-
crease negotiators' willingness to concede from their target
523
points. Thus high aspirations may improve individual and joint
outcomes in some situations but lead to an unnecessary im-
passe in other situations. Economic bargaining theory cannot
account for these empirical findings because aspirations or tar-
get values are theoretically independent of reservation prices,
and it is reservation price that determines the size of the bar-
gaining zone and hence the likelihood of impasse. The empiri-
cal evidence suggests, however, that aspiration values and reser-
vation price are not independent and that increasing the negoti-
ators' target value also affects their reservation price. This of
course suggests that reservation price is not exogenously deter-
mined but a psychological value. The most likely psychological
explanation of this relationship is the anchoring and adjust-
ment heuristic in which one estimates a value or a position on a
dimension by starting with some initial value (anchor) and then
adjusting it (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Typically, adjust-
ment is insufficient (e.g, the judgment of the new position is too
close to the initial value).
The primary theoretical concerns with motivational ap-
proaches are the operationalization and measurement of aspira-
tions. The common method used to examine aspiration is to
instruct negotiators to meet or exceed an explicit, fixed payoff
level. However, experimenter-provided goals may not act as an
aspiration as intended but may instead provide subjects with
unintentional information about the structure of the bargain-
ing task (e.g, a variable-sum structure). Furthermore, there is
typically no assessment to indicate whether bargainers accept
the experimenter-provided goals. Another problem is that nego-
tiators' goals may change during the course of bargaining
(Werner & Tietz, 1982), yet in empirical analyses researchers
have assumed goals are stable throughout bargaining.
The Dual Concern Model represents a dramatic shift from
traditional bargaining theories that view aspiration as a continu-
ous, unidimensional concept in which the primary objective
attributed to negotiators is that of maximizing individual gain.
A key concern with the Dual Concern Model is the experimen-
tal incentives and the theoretical concepts. Subjects are typi-
cally instructed to earn as many points as they can in a negotia-
tion task in which they know only their own preferences. This
aspect of the experiment is designed to induce a high concern
for oneself. Then subjects are told that they should expect to
interact with the other party in the future (Ben%av & Pruitt,
1984a, 1984b) or are given a small gift from the experimenter
(Pruitt et al, 1982). This aspect of the experiment is designed to
heighten negotiators' concern for the other party. However, it is
unclear whether this manipulation actually produces greater
concern for the other party; no manipulation checks are re-
ported. Furthermore, even if subjects are motivated to care
about the other party, it is not clear how they transform their
motivation into behaviors and strategies, given that they do not
know the interests of the other party.
A more serious concern with the model is that the experimen-
tal manipulations used to induce concern for the other party
8
A methodological complexity is the fact that the higher joint out-
comes obtained in the high-aspiration conditions are confounded with
the measure of individual profit. A pure measure of individual profit
would require a comparison of outcomes within each bargaining pair.
 524 LEIGH THOMPSON
also contain unintentional clues about the variable-sum struc-
ture of the task. Simply put, if negotiators are told to maximize
joint outcomes, they may logically conclude that the task is not
a fixed-sum game. Thus the goal orientation is confounded
with information about the structure of the task.
The model also has difficulty accounting for how negotiators
who have individualistic orientations (e.g., no or little concern
for the other party) reach integrative outcomes (Bazerman et al,
1985; Kelley, 1966; Kimmel et al, 1980; Thompson & Hastie, in
press). According to the Dual Concern Model, integrative out-
comes are reached through joint problem-solving in which both
parties are concerned with each other's welfare. However, high
joint outcomes may be reached without problem-solving ef-
forts, through the efforts of each party to pursue his or her own
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interests (Kelley & Schenitzki, 1972). The model has similar
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
difficulty explaining how negotiators who are presumably
highly concerned with their opponents' welfare (e.g., partners in
romantic relationships) fail to reach mutually beneficial out-
comes (Fry, Firestone, & Williams, 1983).
Finally, the model is restrictive and difficult to generalize.
Concern for oneself and another is modeled in an overly sim-
plistic fashion: either high or low. It is possible that negotiators
have more complex goals, such as a desire to reach a fair out-
come (Loewenstein, Thompson, & Bazerman, 1989; Schelling,
1960). These alternative goals are not captured by the model.
Furthermore, the model's predictions are limited to situations
in which negotiators have the same bargaining orientation. It is
not clear what predictions would be made for situations in
which negotiators have different motivational orientations.
Cognitive Approach
According to the cognitive approach, negotiation is a com-
plex decision-making task in which negotiators are faced with
alternative courses of action, and choices among behavioral al-
ternatives are determined by negotiators' judgments of the task
(Bazerman & Carroll, 1987). Negotiators construct mental rep-
resentations of the negotiation situation and their opponent,
and their behavior is influenced by their judgments of the other
party, their own bargaining role, and the bargaining situation.
The basis of the cognitive approach is information-process-
ing theory (Bazerman & Carroll, 1987; Carroll & Payne, in
press). Cognitive information-processing theory is a theory of
the mind of the individual actor. The essential elements of the
information-processing approach are presented as a list of gen-
eral principles briefly described here (see Anderson, 1985, and
Hastie, 1986, for more extensive treatments). The fundamental
material of the information-processing approach is informa-
tion. Information is typically represented as a list of features;
concepts are represented as nodes labeled with a word or a
phrase, and relations between idea nodes are symbolized theo-
retically as links in a network. Information is stored in memory
in one of several alternative structures. The most common is a
list of concepts, wherein each concept is linked to one or two
adjacent nodes. Information is available according to simple
spreading-activation principles. Activation spreads from a
currently active location in a knowledge structure to other
nearby locations; the spread is rapid, and the amount of activa-
tion of proximate locations is inversely related to the number of
locations, and it diminishes sharply with the distance from the
source of activation (Anderson, 1985). An executive monitor
controls the information-processing system by operating on
goals and plans organized into a control structure hierarchy.
The larger information-processing system comprises a series of
component locations that are referred to as independent memo-
ries. The information-processing system tends to behave eco-
nomically to accomplish it goals by expending a minimum
amount of time and processing resources. This tendency gives
rise to heuristics or cognitive shortcuts that facilitate informa-
tion processing but often produce inaccurate judgments and
biases (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).
Researchers have enhanced theoretical development of the
cognitive approach by identifying the judgment tasks that nego-
tiators face (Carroll & Payne, in press; Thompson & Hastie,
1990), examining negotiators' mental representations of the
task and their opponent (Carroll, Bazerman, & Maury, 1988;
Pinkley, 1990; Thompson & Hastie, in press), examining the
accuracy of negotiators' judgments (Bazerman & Carroll, 1987;
Thompson & Hastie, in press), and exploring the relationship
between judgment and behavior (Thompson & Hastie, in
press). Methodologies, such as recall and think-aloud measures
are used to examine information processing and judgment in
negotiation (Carroll et al, 1988; Thompson & Hastie, 1990, in
press). A number of judgment errors have been identified in
negotiation (Bazerman & Neale, 1983; Thompson & Hastie,
1990, in press), and heuristic information processes similar to
those identified in individual decision-making tasks are hy-
pothesized to guide social judgment and behavior in negotia-
tion.
Economic Criteria
Mutual Agreement
Neale and Bazerman (1985a) derived a prediction from pros-
pect theory to examine whether a negotiator's mental represen-
tation of the task, or cognitive frame, influences bargaining
behavior. According to prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky,
1979), people have different utility functions for gain and loss,
and objectively identical decision tasks produce different
choices among identical options when the reference point de-
fining gain and loss is altered. The hypothesis was that negotia-
tors who were risk averse would be more likely to make conces-
sions to avoid an impasse; in contrast, risk-seeking negotiators
would be less likely to make concessions and more likely to risk
an impasse. Neale and Bazerman examined two factors that
they thought would affect risk aversion: the framing of negotia-
tion payoffs and negotiators' judgments of the probability that
their offer would be selected by a neutral third party under
final offer arbitration. They manipulated reference points by
instructing some negotiators to "maximize gain" and providing
negotiators with payoff schedules containing positive numbers;
negotiators with a negative frame were instructed to "minimize
loss" and were provided with a payoff schedule containing nega-
tive numbers. Of course, the negotiation tasks were objectively
identical. Neale and Bazerman further hypothesized that nego-
tiators who believed that an arbitrator would choose their offer
under final offer arbitration would be less likely to compromise
 NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES
and more likely to risk reaching an impasse than would negotia-
tors who were less confident that their offer would be selected.
They therefore instructed half of the negotiators in their sample
about the overconfidence judgment error; the remaining half
were not given training. As predicted, negotiators who viewed
negotiation in terms of minimizing loss and who believed that
their offer would be chosen in the case of final offer arbitration
were more likely to reach an impasse. Neale and Bazerman
concluded that framing affects negotiation behavior in a man-
ner similar to that observed in individual decision-making
tasks.
Joint Outcomes
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Framing of negotiation payoffs. Predictions derived from
prospect theory have also been tested to examine joint profit-
ability in negotiation (Bazerman et al, 1985; Neale & Bazer-
man, 1985a; Neale, Huber & Northcraft, 1987; Neale & North-
craft, 1986). The prediction is that negotiators with a positive
frame (who view negotiation in terms of maximizing gain)
should be risk averse, whereas those with a negative frame (who
view negotiation in terms of minimizing loss) should be risk
seeking. Risk aversion should lead to more concessionary be-
havior and higher joint outcomes; risk seeking should lead to
more contentious behavior and more impasses, resulting in
lower joint outcomes. This prediction has received support in a
number of studies (Bazerman et al, 1985; Neale & Bazerman,
1985a; Neale et al, 1987; Neale & Northcraft, 1986). However,
there is an important qualification. Most of this research is
based on market simulations in which negotiators make a num-
ber of transactions. Positively framed negotiators complete
more transactions than do negatively framed negotiators, which
results in greater total profit; however, negatively framed negoti-
ators earn more per transaction (Bazerman et al, 1985; Neale &
Bazerman, 1985b; Neale et al, 1987; Neale & Northcraft, 1986).
Again, this is an example of how different measures of perfor-
mance appear to yield inconsistent results.
Judgment accuracy. Thompson and Hastie (1990, in press)
hypothesized that misperceptions of the other party are a pri-
mary cause of suboptimal outcomes in negotiation. They rea-
soned that a key judgment that negotiators make concerns their
perception of the other party's interests and the structure of the
bargaining task (e.g., purely competitive or integrative; Thomp-
son & Hastie, 1990, in press). Thompson and Hastie identified
two critical judgments that negotiators make about the other
party's interests: compatibility judgments and priority judg-
ments. When negotiators make compatibility judgments, they
determine whether all or only some of their interests are incom-
patible with those of the other party. The tendency to perceive
conflict when none exists is referred to as incompatability error
(Thompson & Hastie, in press). Priority judgments concern
negotiators' perceptions of the other party's evaluation of the
relative importance of the to-be-negotiated issues. If the two
parties have different evaluations of the relative importance of
the issues, then an integrative solution is possible (Pruitt &
Rubin, 1986; Raiffa, 1982). Simply put, when negotiators have
different values, each has something to offer that is relatively
less valuable to them than to those with whom they are bar-
gaining. The tendency for negotiators to assume that the other
525
party places the same importance on, or has the same priorities
for, the negotiation issues as they do when in fact negotiators
have different priorities is referred to as the fixed-pie error (Ba-
zerman & Neale, 1983; Thompson & Hastie, in press). Thomp-
son and Hastie (1990, in press) measured negotiators' percep-
tions several times during negotiation and found that judgment
accuracy was strongly related to negotiation outcomes: negotia-
tors who made accurate priority and compatibility judgments
attained higher joint outcomes than did those who made fixed-
pie and incompatibility errors. The conclusion was that negotia-
tors' perceptions influence their behavior and the quality of
their outcomes.
Claiming Resources
Framing of negotiation payoffs. Buyers tend to outperform
sellers in symmetric bargaining tasks (Bazerman et al, 1985;
Eliashberg, LaTour, Rangaswamy, & Stern, 1986; Huber &
Neale, 1986; McAlister et al, 1986; Neale & Northcraft, 1986).
This effect is perplexing because the roles of "buyer" and
"seller" in these laboratory tasks are objectively identical; nei-
ther party has an inherent advantage. Neale et al. (1987) hy-
pothesized that this phenomenon may be interpreted as a fram-
ing effect. They reasoned that buyers view negotiation in terms
of losing resources or giving up something, whereas sellers view
negotiation in terms of gaining resources. This interpretation,
in light of prospect theory's prediction that people have differ-
ent utility functions for gain and loss, suggests that buyers are
risk seeking and sellers are risk averse. Neale et al. hypothesized
that the more risk seeking the negotiator is, the higher the pre-
mium he or she would demand for a negotiated settlement and
the greater amount of resources he or she would claim. To test
their hypothesis, Neale et al. had some negotiators complete a
traditional negotiation task involving buyer and seller roles; the
other subjects completed a task that was objectively identical
except that the context was changed: the labels buyer and seller
were changed to mythical names that presumably would not
lead to different gain/loss frames. When role information was
absent (mythical roles), task characteristics influenced mean
profit per transaction: Negatively framed bargainers outper-
formed positively framed bargainers. However, when role infor-
mation was present (buyer-seller roles), role information in-
fluenced mean profit per transaction: Buyers outperformed
sellers. The conclusion was that there are multiple sources of
framing bias in negotiation: those that are responses to task
demands and those that are contextually elicited by roles.
Judgment accuracy. Thompson and Hastie (1990, in press)
hypothesized that the accuracy of negotiators' perceptions of
the other party's interests should play a large role in determin-
ing outcomes. The reasoning was that negotiators who make
inaccurate judgments about the other party assume that the
other party's interests are completely opposed to their own, and
they therefore overlook opportunities for mutual gain and settle
for suboptimal solutions. In a series of studies, the relationship
between the accuracy of priority and compatibility judgments
and bargaining performance was examined. A strong relation-
ship between judgment accuracy and payoffs emerged: Negotia-
tors who made more accurate judgments about the other party's
interests earned higher individual payoffs.
 526 LEIGH THOMPSON
Social Psychological Criteria
Perceptions of the Bargaining Situation
Bazerman and Neale (1983) speculated that negotiators bring
a fixed-pie, or win-lose, perception to negotiation. They fur-
ther argued that the fixed-pie perception represents a faulty
judgment when negotiation situations are truly integrative or
provide opportunity for joint gain. Thompson and Hastie
(1990) measured negotiators' perceptions immediately before, 5
min into, and immediately after an integrative negotiation task.
The majority of negotiators entered negotiation with a fixed-pie
perception of the task. As the negotiation progressed, some
negotiators learned that the other party's interests were not com-
pletely opposed to their own. However, misperceptions after
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negotiation were still substantial. For example, after negotia-
tion, most negotiators (85%) failed to realize that they had inter-
ests on one issue that were perfectly compatible with those of
the other party, and a majority (68%) had a fixed-pie perception.
The conclusion is that negotiators bring a win-lose, competitive
expectation to negotiation that is remarkably resistant to
change.
Perceptions of the Opponent
Negotiators tend to perceive the other party as completely
dissimilar to themselves. For example, negotiators expect the
other parties' interests to be completely opposed to their own
(Thompson & Hastie, 1990). This expectation persists even
after bargains in which negotiators have some interests that are
completely compatible with those of the other party (Thomp-
son & Hastie, in press). The existence of the fixed-pie and in-
compatibility perceptions suggests that negotiators often use
their own interests to make an inference about those of the
other party. The typical inference process is to assume that the
other party's interests are completely opposed to one's own.
A complementary psychological process was suggested by
Oskamp (1965) and Stillinger and Ross (1987). Stillinger and
Ross hypothesized that negotiators reason that proposals of-
fered by their opponent must be less advantageous for them-
selves and more advantageous to the adversary than they ap-
pear to be. Simply put, negotiators reason that whatever is good
for their opponent must be bad for themselves. This suggests
that proposals and offers suggested by opponents may be deval-
ued in negotiation. To examine this hypothesis, Stillinger and
Ross had some negotiators rate the value of an opponent's con-
cession before it was actually made; others rated the value after
the concession was offered. Negotiators engaged in reactive de-
valuation: They devalued the concessions after they were of-
fered by their opponent.
The Thompson-Hastie analysis differs from the Stillinger-
Ross effect in terms of the locus of the inference process.
Thompson and Hastie (1990, in press) posited that negotiators
make inferences about their opponent's interests on the basis of
their own values; Stillinger and Ross (1987) suggested that nego-
tiators make inferences about their own values on the basis of
those articulated by the other party. Are these inference pro-
cesses contradictory? I believe that both processes characterize
social inference in negotiation and that the occurrence of each
process depends on the strength, clarity, and commitment of
negotiators' values and the other party's interests. When negoti-
ators are uncertain about their own interests or have conflicting
interests, then reactive devaluation processes most likely char-
acterize bargaining behavior. However, when negotiators' own
interests are available and clear, then fixed-pie and incompati-
bility inferences characterize bargaining behavior. The impor-
tant implication is that both inference processes lead to the
perception of conflict between parties.
Perceptions of the Self
Self-serving evaluations. Negotiators make self-serving attri-
butions and evaluations in bargaining (Brandstatter, Kette, &
Sageder, 1982; Turnbull et al, 1976). For example, negotiators
who are unable to reach mutually acceptable agreements blame
their opponent for the failure, whereas they usually attribute
success to themselves (Brandstatter et al, 1982). This pattern of
results is consistent with research in other social domains that
suggests that people make self-serving attributions for success
and failure (McFarland & Ross, 1982) and make self-enhancing
downward social comparisons (Wills, 1981).
Overconfidence. Overconfidence in judgment is closely re-
lated to self-serving processes and is pervasive in bargaining.
For example, Neale and Bazerman (1983) examined negotia-
tors' perceptions that an arbitrator would favor their proposal
over the proposal suggested by their adversary. The majority of
negotiators believed that an arbitrator would favor their pro-
posal. Neale and Bazerman reasoned that negotiators were
overconfident when they made probability estimates greater
than 50% because, on average, negotiators should expect that
their offer will be selected by a neutral third party about half of
the time.
Discussion
The cognitive approach is especially appealing because it is
an attempt to predict behavior across a broad range of people
and situations. Another advantage of the approach is that it
provides methodological tools, such as recall and think-aloud
measures that have proved useful in identifying constructs,
measuring variables, and exploring implications of the ap-
proach. Finally, the cognitive approach provides conceptual
links to other social-cognitive theories at different levels of sci-
entific analysis. The approach, however, is not complete. It
shares all of the disadvantages associated with more general
cognitive information-processing models (cf. Hastie, 1986) and
also has some unique shortcomings. First, the cognitive ap-
proach is still in its infancy. Although this is not a disadvantage
per se, a coherent, internally consistent, falsifiable theory of the
negotiator has not been developed, and the approach does not
readily suggest testable implications. Second, the current ap-
plication of methodological tools is incomplete. Research meth-
odologies often fall short of a thorough information-processing
analysis (Carroll & Payne, in press). Judgment processes and
products are often inferred on basis of negotiation outcomes
rather through direct examination. Some exceptions are
Carroll et al.'s (1988) think-aloud study of decision-making pro-
cesses in competitive situations and Thompson and Hastie's
(1990, in press) think-aloud analysis of judgment error in negoti-
 NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES
ation. The aim of information-processing approach is to obtain
a "picture" of the negotiator's mind—to understand its pro-
cesses and products. In order to accomplish this, it is necessary
to move away from comparing negotiators' behavior with pre-
dictions derived from normative models and, instead, focus on
the cognitive processes of negotiators. This approach, of course,
requires that researchers include social-psychological measures
in their investigations of bargaining behavior to examine negoti-
ators' perceptions.
A unique set of problems arises from the imperfect mapping
of cognitive information processing theory onto the study of
negotiation. One limitation of the cognitive approach is the
impoverished treatment of motivational factors. Although con-
cepts of utility, aspiration, and goals are acknowledged, their
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representation and relationship to judgment and decisions are
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not well specified. This task becomes even more complicated
when models posit the existence of goals more complex than
simple economic utility maximization.
An implicit assumption of the cognitive approach is that
many of the judgment phenomena that occur in individual
decision-making tasks may be extended to the interpersonal
task of negotiation. Consequently, many of the phenomena
studied have been those explored in individual judgment tasks.
This reasoning however, constrains the scope of theoretical
analysis. In extending individual judgment phenomena to nego-
tiation tasks, researchers often ignore the interactive nature of
negotiation. It is assumed that negotiators' perceptions and
judgments are relatively static and do not change as a function
of the influence of the other party. Furthermore, such assump-
tions often constrain the focus of analysis: Individual judgment
phenomena that may be easily extended to negotiation situa-
tions are most often studied.
Finally, the identification of judgment errors and biases is
problematic. Judgment errors and biases are hypothesized to be
the major cause of ineffective negotiation behavior and subopti-
mal outcomes. An analysis of judgment error and bias requires
consideration of three elements: a judgment, a standard or a
criterion of truth, and a rule specifying a correspondence rela-
tion between the judgment and the criterion (Hastie & Ra-
sinski, 1988). It has been hypothesized that negotiators ignore
relevant information and distort otherwise accurate informa-
tion (Carroll et al., 1988). However, it is also possible that negoti-
ators may not have the necessary information to make accurate
judgments of the other party because of insufficient or decep-
tive information exchange (Pruitt & Lewis, 1975; Thompson, in
press-a). Under such circumstances, it is not appropriate to
view inaccuracy as indicative of bias (Funder, 1987).
CONCLUSIONS
Theoretical Issues
It was clear before I wrote this article that normative models
do not adequately account for empirical observations of bar-
gaining. My argument is that psychological theories of negotia-
tion provide the best approach for understanding negotiation
behavior. The descriptive approaches examined in this article
offer important insights for understanding negotiation, but
each also contains shortcomings and limitations. In this review,
527
I made clear distinctions among the individual differences,
motivational, and cognitive approaches. However, I do not
mean to imply that these theoretical approaches are necessarily
contradictory. The approaches focus on different constructs,
and few researchers have attempted to pit one approach against
another. Instead, investigators in recent analyses have at-
tempted to integrate these approaches by developing frame-
works that include personality, motivation, and cognitive pro-
cesses (Bazerman & Carroll, 1987; Neale & Northcraft, in
press). These frameworks are primarily structural and serve
chiefly to organize the large literature on negotiation rather
than to derive implications and testable predictions.
The purpose of this article is not to propose a new theory of
negotiation behavior but to identify the elements and processes
that should be included and the phenomena that must be ex-
plained by a psychological theory of negotiation. First, the
theory should be accessible to objective, economic analysis;
that is, the theory should provide a way of measuring concepts
such as the bargaining zone, integrative outcomes, and distribu-
tive bargaining outcomes. Second, a theory of negotiation
should explain the perceptual experience of negotiators and
their judgment processes. The most enduring and robust per-
ceptions include the fixed-pie perception, self-serving attribu-
tions, and gain and loss frames of reference. Third, a theory
should explain the relationships between judgment and behav-
ior in negotiation, such as those between fixed-pie perceptions
and outcomes and between gain/loss frames of reference and
performance. Fourth, in addition to explaining the correspon-
dences between judgment and behavior, the theory should ex-
plain discrepancies. Discrepancies occur on the general level
between social-psychological and economic measures. For ex-
ample, although most negotiators fail to realize that their inter-
ests may be completely compatible with those of their oppo-
nent, many are able to reach optimal agreements on these issues
anyway (Thompson, 1990, in press-a). Discrepancies also occur
on a more local level; for example, aspiration levels affect per-
ceptions of reservation price. Finally, motivation and goals are
essential ingredients in a theory of negotiation. The fundamen-
tal elements of negotiation imply the existence of motivation
(e.g, interests, utilities), and aspirations are clearly empirically
related to behavior and performance. In economic analyses,
researchers typically assume that negotiators' primary motiva-
tion is to maximize their own gain. However, negotiators' goals
are undoubtedly more complex, and they are clearly concerned
with the outcomes of the other party as well as their own (Loe-
wenstein et al, 1989; Messick & Sentis, 1985; Schelling, 1960).
The theory should provide a way of capturing alternate goals.
The list of theoretical imperatives outlined here is not ex-
haustive. The temptation facing theoreticians is to develop con-
ceptual frameworks that encompass all the features and charac-
teristics of negotiation and apply to several levels of analysis.
However, I think that the most powerful theory of negotiation
behavior will begin at the level of the individual negotiator.
This view, of course, is most consistent with the information-
processing theory that is the basis of the cognitive approach
outlined in this article. In advocating this model as a basis for
constructing a theory of the negotiator, I do not suggest that the
interpersonal aspect of negotiation be ignored. I believe that
the theoretical task of understanding communication will be
 528 LEIGH THOMPSON
facilitated once an understanding of the individual negotiator's
mind is developed. Also, I do not suggest that the cognitive
approach is incompatible with motivational and aspiration
models of behavior. Quite the contrary. As noted earlier, a psy-
chological theory of negotiation behavior will need to include
motivational factors as well as social judgment processes.
It may help to clarify the relationship between motivational
and cognitive models if I suggest an illustrative relation. A
current theoretical and empirical hole in negotiation research
concerns how negotiators develop goals in bargaining. In most
of the studies addressing the goal-performance relationship,
investigators experimentally manipulate goals by providing ne-
gotiators with a performance level to achieve or exceed. In the
absence of performance constraints imposed by experimenters,
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what determines the goals that negotiators adopt? One hypoth-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
esis is that negotiators' goals are guided by their judgments of
the amount of available resources and the other party's inter-
ests. Thus judgments influence bargaining aspirations, which
guide behavior. The suggestion that goals guide behavior is not
new; in some of the earliest and most important analyses of
negotiation behavior, researchers hypothesized that goals guide
search and behavior (cf. Schelling, 1960; Siegel & Fouraker,
1960). What is new about this view is the role of judgment in
negotiation and the relationship between judgment and aspira-
tions. Researchers have already begun to explore the assump-
tions that negotiators bring to negotiation and how perceptions
change during negotiation (cf. Thompson & Hastie, 1990, in
press). The next important step is to explore the relationship
between judgments and goals.
Empirical Issues
Examination of the matrix created by the intersection of
theory and research in this review highlights areas that are in
need of development. In general, economic measures of perfor-
mance have been used more extensively than social-psychologi-
cal measures. I do not suggest that social-psychological mea-
sures replace objective analysis; it is important to include both
measures in research programs. There are at least three reasons
for this. First, negotiators typically do not have the information
necessary to make objective judgments of the bargaining situa-
tion; their understanding of the bargaining situation is based
on their perceptions. A "picture" of the negotiator's perceptual
experience seems to be important for a theory of negotiation.
Second, it is useful to compare negotiators' perceptions with
objective measures. Some of the most enduring questions in
psychology have to do with the study of accuracy of judgment
and perception (Funder, 1987; Hastie & Rasinski, 1987; Kru-
glanski, 1989). Researchers in other domains such as person
perception have been forced to rely on indirect methods that
infer error from subjects' tendencies to rely on "bad cues" and
to ignore "good cues" or their failure to match the output of a
normative model (e.g., Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Negotiation with
its well-defined, objective task structure provides an ideal set of
criteria from which to examine the accuracy of negotiators'
perceptions (Thompson & Hastie, 1990). Finally, negotiators'
perceptions are important to examine because they influence
behavior in negotiation (Thompson & Hastie, in press).
Negotiation performance (in terms of economic criteria) is
frequently less than optimal. Although this empirical reality
suggests that the normative model of negotiation does not ful-
fill a descriptive function, one can argue that the paradigm on
which descriptive research is based does not provide an appro-
priate testing ground for the economic approach. Simply put,
many of the studies that indicate that negotiation behavior and
outcomes are inefficient have been based on examinations of
single or one-shot negotiation situations. One argument is that
research findings observed in one-shot interactions are trivial
because inefficiencies are corrected by experience in the mar-
ket (Grether & Plott, 1979). Although the precise mechanism
by which experience improves performance is not well speci-
fied, experience is generally thought to provide individuals
with feedback that they can use to correct their judgments (Ho-
garth, 1981). However, Einhorn (1980) noted that learning from
experience is difficult because feedback is often incomplete or
delayed.
This challenge is compelling because many negotiations take
place not as isolated interactions but as part of a continuous
process (Carroll & Payne, in press; Hogarth, 1981; Raiffa,
1982). A modest but important set of studies has begun to
address the question of whether people bargain more effec-
tively if they gain experience. This research is characterized by
three paradigms: studies of expert negotiators, experimental
bargaining markets, and laboratory negotiation experiences.
Studies of Experts
A widely held view is that experts—people who negotiate for
a living—should be better negotiators than are novices. Neale
and Northcraft (1986) compared experts' performance to ama-
teurs' performance on an integrative bargaining task. The ex-
perts were corporate real estate executives with an average of 10
years' experience; the amateurs were students at a state univer-
sity. The experts were more successful in reaching integrative
outcomes in a novel bargaining task than were the amateurs. In
a similar analysis, Scholz et al. (1982) compared professionals
(head buyers of West German department stores) with nonpro-
fessionals (vocational retraining students) on an integrative bar-
gaining task. Professionals resolved conflicts more quickly
than did nonprofessionals but did not differ from them in
terms of joint outcomes. However, the measures of joint perfor-
mance in each study were different; the discrepancy may be a
function of the different dependent variables used in each
study. In general, the research on professionals versus novices is
scant. One problem with comparisons of professionals with
nonprofessionals is the inability to infer a causal relationship
between negotiation skill and performance; professionals
differ in a number of other ways from novices. As a result, some
researchers have manipulated (rather than measured) experi-
ence.
Experimental Bargaining Markets
In market simulations, buyers and sellers are instructed to
complete as many profitable transactions as they can within a
short amount of time (usually 25 min or less). The only restric-
tion is that parties may not interact with the same person more
than once. In market studies, negotiators are essentially clones
 NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES
(i.e., all buyers have identical preferences and all sellers have
identical preferences). The robust finding in market studies is
that negotiation contracts become more integrative over time
(cf. Bazerman et al, 1985). However, because all buyers are
identical and all sellers are identical, there exists a given set of
optimal solutions. Thus one explanation for the improvements
in performance over time is that knowledge of the "best solu-
tion" simply spreads through the market. Thus it is unclear
whether negotiators are learning negotiation skills that general-
ize across different situations or whether performance is task
specific.
Negotiation Experience
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Thompson (1990) challenged negotiators with several bar-
gaining tasks, each requiring unique solutions in order to reach
integrative agreement. Thus in contrast to bargaining markets
in which bargainers negotiate with opponents who all have the
same preferences, one could not reach integrative solutions in
Thompson's tasks by merely applying the same solution. Negoti-
ators engaged in seven bargaining tasks (the high-experience
group); their opponents had either no experience or just a single
previous bargaining experience (the naive group). Logrolling
skills improved as negotiators gained experience. Furthermore,
negotiators were more successful in logrolling when the naive
member of the bargaining pair had just a single previous experi-
ence as opposed to no previous experience, and highly experi-
enced bargainers were able to claim a larger share of the re-
sources at the expense of their naive opponents. There was an
important caveat on the experience-performance relationship:
Experience did not improve negotiators' ability to recognize
compatible issues. At least one negotiator in 71% of all pairs
failed to realize that some interests of the other party were
perfectly compatible with their own; 20% of the pairs reached
suboptimal outcomes on compatible issues.
In another study, Thompson (in press-b) reasoned that experi-
ence may not always have a beneficial effect on performance
and could potentially hinder negotiators' ability to reach inte-
grative agreements. Thompson reasoned that negotiators who
engaged in purely distributive negotiations would develop a
fixed-pie perception of the task. When they are confronted
with a subsequent integrative negotiation situation, their perfor-
mance may be hindered as a consequence of their erroneous
expectation that is based on their experience. The hypothesis
was supported: Negotiators who had experience in tasks with
logrolling potential performed better in a subsequent logrolling
task than did negotiators whose initial experience was in a dis-
tributive task.
The purpose of this article has been to address the important
empirical and theoretical issues in negotiation research. Be-
cause negotiation behavior is a fundamental form of social in-
teraction, it is a major area of research in several fields. A num-
ber of perspectives that attempt to predict behavior and perfor-
mance have emerged, and a number of performance criteria
have been identified to measure performance. In this article I
have identified some important factors that predict negotiation
behavior and performance and some theoretical issues for fu-
ture research.
529
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Received March 14,1989
Revision received February 20,1990
Accepted March 20,1990 •