Neither Strategic Nor Selfish: Individualistic Negotiators and Their Behavior Over Time
18 Pages Posted: 25 Mar 2002
Date Written: February 2002
Abstract
Individualistically-oriented negotiators do worse than cooperatively-oriented negotiators, even when they are engaging in similar behaviors. This paper proposes and test hypotheses about negotiators' motivations and their behaviors in a repeated measures design. Individualistic negotiators appear to be neither selfish nor strategic: they do not consistently use distributive behaviors oriented only towards their own goals nor do they begin at the same level of distributive behavior use as cooperative negotiators and increase at the end as they attempt to claim value. In this study we find that individualistic negotiators, instead, engage in more distributive behaviors at the beginning of the negotiation and reduce their reliance on distributive behavior as the negotiation progresses. At the same time, individualistic negotiators increase their use of behaviors targeted at creating value, ultimately even surpassing cooperative negotiators.
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