When presenting the first offer in a negotiation, you might assume
that your counterpart will find the offer more persuasive if you back
it up with a justification. A carefully reasoned argument is bound to
be more compelling than simply a cold, stark number, right?
Negotiation scholars often cite the results of a well-known experiment
as evidence of this intuition: Ellen Langer, Arthur Blank and Benzion
Chanowitz's 1978 “copy-machine study.”
In that study an experimenter approached someone who was about to use
a copier in a university building and asked to cut in to make five
copies. The researchers found that when the experimenter provided a
justification for cutting, even if it was rather lame – “May I use the
Xerox machine, because I have to make some copies?” – a striking 93
per cent of those approached allowed the individual to go first. By
contrast, when the experimenter simply asked to make five copies
without providing a justification, only 60 per cent acquiesced.
The experimenters theorised that people mindlessly accepted the word
“because” as a signal that a compelling justification was forthcoming.
Applying these results to negotiation, scholars have advised
bargainers that adding even a weak justification to a request can
dramatically increase the odds that your counterpart will accept it.
Yet the results of the copy-machine experiment are actually more
complex, and less applicable to negotiation, than we might think,
write Tel Aviv University researchers Yossi Maaravi, Yoav Ganzach and
Asya Pazy in a recent article in The Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
As it turns out, when experimenters made a larger request in the
copier study — to cut in to make 20 copies — accompanied by the same
weak argument, only 24 per cent of those approached agreed. It seems
that it was the trivial nature of the original request that generated
compliance, rather than the use of a justification.
What is the implication for negotiators? Maaravi and his colleagues
set out to answer this question.
Consider that the typical first offer in a negotiation consists of
much more than a request to make 5, 20 or even 1,000 copies out of
turn. As the person making the first offer, you are dropping an
“anchor” that probably will form the basis of discussion. You might
ask a counterpart to accept a low salary, a rock-bottom price for her
beloved home or a reduced work order. Should you or shouldn't you
provide a justification for your first offer?
Maaravi and his colleagues conducted four experiments to find out. In
their studies, participants engaged in online-purchasing negotiations.
Across the studies, the researchers found that, when it was easy for
negotiators to generate counter-arguments, they were less receptive to
the other side's initial offer. In one experiment, for example, with
participants playing the role of buyer, a seller presented them with
an opening offer for an apartment: “I ask $190,000 for the apartment.”
Sometimes the offer was accompanied by a supporting argument,
including reference to a recent renovation, the presence of an
elevator etc., and sometimes it was not. Buyers were asked to respond
with a counteroffer.
When sellers justified their first offers, buyers with easy access to
the same facts about the apartment made significantly lower, tougher
counteroffers than did participants who had been distracted from these
facts by an unrelated computer task. That is, the seller's efforts at
persuasion were more successful when buyers had to work harder to
remember the seller's arguments.
According to the experimenters, the results suggest that, when a
negotiator gives a justification for an initial offer, his counterpart
is likely to respond negatively to the attempt “to limit their
negotiation freedom by pushing them or doing the thinking for them.”
In other words, if you remind a prospective buyer that your apartment
has an elevator and was recently renovated, she might remind herself
that it lacks parking and a washing machine. Thus, easy-to-counter
arguments trigger a backlash in the form of simple counter-arguments.
The results of Maaravi, Ganzach and Pazy's study suggest four
prescriptions for negotiators, depending on whether you are making a
first offer or responding to one:
Pause before persuading.
When counter-arguments are easily available to your counterpart, your
efforts at persuasion can backfire. On the other hand, negotiators may
be more receptive to novel information you provide, such as a newly
lowered price or confidential data.
Consider the opposite.
When the other side makes an initial offer, it can be difficult to see
past it. Yet these findings reinforce the power of “considering the
opposite” — in other words, seeking out and considering information
that is inconsistent with the other party's first offer — and
presenting it as a counter-argument. In one study, researchers Adam
Galinsky of Northwestern University and Thomas Mussweiler of the
University of Cologne found that weighing information that
contradicted the other side's first offer allowed negotiators to
overcome the anchoring effect.
Be ambitious and reasonable.
Though it generally pays to aim high, try to avoid making an opening
offer that could offend or stress your counterpart. Unreasonably
extreme offers likely will drive the other side to search for
counter-arguments.
Don't avoid the challenge.
Making the initial offer poses clear risks. Yet research suggests
that, in many contexts, those who drop the first anchor do better than
those who must try to overcome it.
(From Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School)
( The New York Times News Service)
