The information-anchoring model of first offers: When moving first helps versus hurts negotiators.

Does making the first offer increase or impair a negotiator's outcomes? Past research has found evidence supporting both claims. To reconcile these contradictory findings, we developed and tested an integrative model-the Information-Anchoring Model of First Offers. The model predicts when and why making the first offer helps versus hurts. We suggest that first offers have 2 effects. First, they serve as anchors that pull final settlements toward the initial first-offer value; this anchor function often produces a first-mover advantage. Second, first offers can convey information on the senders' priorities, which makes the sender vulnerable to exploitation and increases the risk of a first-mover disadvantage. To test this model, 3 experiments manipulated the information that senders communicated in their first offer. When senders did not reveal their priorities, the first-mover advantage was replicated. However, when first offers revealed senders' priorities explicitly, implicitly, or both, a first-mover disadvantage emerged. Negotiators' social value orientation moderated this effect: A first-mover disadvantage occurred when senders faced proself recipients who exploited priority information, but not with prosocial recipients. Moderated mediation analyses supported the model assumptions: Proself recipients used their integrative insight to feign priorities in their low-priority issues and thereby claimed more individual value than senders. The final discussion reviews theoretical and applied implications of the Information-Anchoring Model of First Offers. (PsycINFO Database Record

[1]  J. Brett Negotiating globally: how to negotiate deals, resolve disputes, and make decisions across cultural boundaries, second edition , 2001 .

[2]  K. Fiedler,et al.  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 2002 .

[3]  Chris Guthrie,et al.  Anchoring, Information, Expertise, and Negotiation: New Insights from Meta-Analysis , 2006 .

[4]  Stéphane Côté,et al.  Expressing anger in conflict: when it helps and when it hurts. , 2007, The Journal of applied psychology.

[5]  F. Strack,et al.  Explaining the Enigmatic Anchoring Effect: Mechanisms of Selective Accessibility , 1997 .

[6]  M. Mason,et al.  Precise offers are potent anchors: Conciliatory counteroffers and attributions of knowledge in negotiations , 2013 .

[7]  Ryan O. Murphy,et al.  Social Value Orientation , 2014, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[8]  F. Strack,et al.  The use of category and exemplar knowledge in the solution of anchoring tasks. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[9]  R. Fisher,et al.  Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving in , 1981 .

[10]  To Start Low or To Start High? , 2009 .

[11]  F. Strack,et al.  Playing Dice With Criminal Sentences: The Influence of Irrelevant Anchors on Experts’ Judicial Decision Making , 2006, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[12]  Ilana Ritov,et al.  Initial Perceptions in Negotiations: Evaluation and Response to 'Logrolling' Offers , 2002 .

[13]  David D. Loschelder,et al.  Perspective taking as a means to overcome motivational barriers in negotiations: when putting oneself into the opponent's shoes helps to walk toward agreements. , 2011, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[14]  Wolfgang Steinel,et al.  Social motives and strategic misrepresentation in social decision making. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[15]  Chris Janiszewski,et al.  Precision of the Anchor Influences the Amount of Adjustment , 2008, Psychological science.

[16]  Johann Martin Majer,et al.  Procedural frames in negotiations: how offering my resources versus requesting yours impacts perception, behavior, and outcomes. , 2015, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[17]  Ilana Ritov,et al.  Missed Opportunity for Creating Value in Negotiations: Reluctance to Making Integrative Gambit Offers , 2005 .

[18]  Ilana Ritov,et al.  Experience in Integrative Negotiations: What Needs to Be Learned? , 2007 .

[19]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  Chameleons bake bigger pies and take bigger pieces: Strategic behavioral mimicry facilitates negotiation outcomes , 2007 .

[20]  C. D. De Dreu,et al.  Influence of social motives on integrative negotiation: a meta-analytic review and test of two theories. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[21]  L. Thompson Negotiation behavior and outcomes: Empirical evidence and theoretical issues. , 1990 .

[22]  R. Hastie,et al.  Social perception in negotiation , 1990 .

[23]  Wendi L. Adair,et al.  The timing and function of offers in U.S. and Japanese negotiations. , 2007, The Journal of applied psychology.

[24]  J. Chertkoff,et al.  Opening offer and frequency of concession as bargaining strategies. , 1967 .

[25]  A. Galinsky,et al.  First offers as anchors: the role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[26]  William F. Wright,et al.  Effects of situation familiarity and financial incentives on use of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic for probability assessment , 1989 .

[27]  D. G. Pruitt,et al.  Development of integrative solutions in bilateral negotiation. , 1975 .

[28]  Mark H. McCormack What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School , 1984 .

[29]  Roderick I. Swaab,et al.  The First-Mover Disadvantage , 2014, Psychological science.

[30]  Thomas Mussweiler,et al.  Overcoming the Inevitable Anchoring Effect: Considering the Opposite Compensates for Selective Accessibility , 2000 .

[31]  Thomas Mussweiler,et al.  Numeric Judgments under Uncertainty: The Role of Knowledge in Anchoring , 2000 .

[32]  Wendi L. Adair,et al.  Negotiation behavior when cultures collide: the United States and Japan. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[33]  Ellen Giebels,et al.  Interdependence in negotiation: effects of exit options and social motive on distributive and integrative negotiation , 2000 .

[34]  L. Thompson,et al.  Social Judgment, Feedback, and Interpersonal Learning in Negotiation , 1994 .

[35]  David De Cremer,et al.  Self-interest and beyond: Basic principles of social interaction. , 2007 .

[36]  L. Thompson Information exchange in negotiation , 1991 .

[37]  P. Carnevale,et al.  A Nasty but Effective Negotiation Strategy: Misrepresentation of a Common-Value Issue , 1997 .

[38]  G. Northcraft,et al.  Experts, amateurs, and real estate: An anchoring-and-adjustment perspective on property pricing decisions , 1987 .

[39]  Yossi Maaravi,et al.  Negotiation as a form of persuasion: arguments in first offers. , 2011, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[40]  C. Judd,et al.  When moderation is mediated and mediation is moderated. , 2005, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[41]  I. Ritov,et al.  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Anchoring in Simulated Competitive Market Negotiation , 2022 .

[42]  Roderick I. Swaab,et al.  The Remarkable Robustness of the First-Offer Effect , 2013, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[43]  I. Ritov,et al.  Overcoming initial anchors: the effect of negotiators' dispositional control beliefs , 2010 .

[44]  Leif D. Nelson,et al.  False-Positive Psychology , 2011, Psychological science.

[45]  James K. Sebenius,et al.  3-d Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals , 2006 .

[46]  N. Epley,et al.  Putting Adjustment Back in the Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic: Differential Processing of Self-Generated and Experimenter-Provided Anchors , 2001, Psychological science.

[47]  A. Galinsky,et al.  Good Things Come to Those Who Wait , 2013, Personality & social psychology bulletin.