A Negotiation in Middlemarch

We analyse a negotiation drawn from George Eliot’s great novel Middlemarch: A story of provincial life. Eliot was one of the finest chroniclers of social interaction, and understood the process of negotiation and its role in the community perhaps as well as anyone. The negotiation in question is between a wealthy banker and one of his former associates who sets out (or perhaps just ends up) blackmailing him. We use this case to discuss a wide range of negotiation principles, and show how it provides insights into the importance of the prenegotiation, the role of preparation, empathy and the fostering of relationships (even when you would prefer not to), and the problems of focusing on one’s own BATNA rather than your counterparts’. We conclude with six key negotiation lessons for the fictional negotiator (and for us), and with a brief account of how both fictional and “non-fictional” negotiations can contribute to our understanding of how to learn about and improve negotiation practice.

[1]  D. Read.  The five games of Mr Edgar Allan Poe: A study of strategic thought in ‘The Purloined Letter’ , 2019, Rationality and Society.

[2]  D. Read,et al.  Mind The (Information) Gap: Strategic Non-Disclosure by Marketers and Interventions to Increase Consumer Deliberation , 2017, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[3]  G. Loewenstein,et al.  Information Avoidance , 2016 .

[4]  Emily Sutherland.  The Road to Middlemarch: My Life with George Eliot , 2015 .

[5]  Walter Mischel,et al.  The Marshmallow Test: Understanding Self-control and How To Master It , 2014 .

[6]  D. Coleman.  George Eliot and Money: Economics, Ethics and Literature , 2014 .

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

[8]  Emanuele Castano,et al.  Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind , 2013, Science.

[9]  J. A. Garraty.  Right Hand Man: The Life of George W. Perkins , 2012 .

[10]  Keith Oatley,et al.  The Function of Fiction is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience , 2008, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[11]  A. Galinsky,et al.  Why It Pays to Get Inside the Head of Your Opponent The Differential Effects of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Strategic Interactions , 2022 .

[12]  Susan G. Hackley.  One Reasonable and Inquiring Man: 12 Angry Men as a Negotiation‐Teaching Tool , 2007 .

[13]  Cass R. Sunstein,et al.  Group Polarization and 12 Angry Men , 2007 .

[14]  Deepak Malhotra,et al.  Negotiation Genius: How to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Brilliant Results at the Bargaining Table and Beyond , 2007 .

[15]  Alexander Hiam,et al.  Mastering Business Negotiation: A Working Guide to Making Deals and Resolving Conflict , 2006 .

[16]  A. Heifetz.  Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge. , 2004 .

[17]  Imraan Coovadia.  George Eliot's Realism and Adam Smith , 2002 .

[18]  J K Sebenius,et al.  Six habits of merely effective negotiators. , 2001, Harvard business review.

[19]  Barry Nalebuff,et al.  Common Knowledge as a Barrier to Negotiation , 1997 .

[20]  Richard A. Posner,et al.  Blackmail, Privacy, and Freedom of Contract , 1993 .

[21]  T. Schelling,et al.  The Strategy of Conflict. , 1961 .

[22]  Ayelet Fishbach,et al.  A recipe for friendship: Similar food consumption promotes trust and cooperation , 2017 .

[23]  N. Chater.  Book Review in press, American Journal of Psychology. The Richness of Flatness Review of the Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain , 2014 .

[24]  R. Trivers,et al.  Deceit and self-deception : fooling yourself the better to fool others , 2013 .

[25]  M. Chwe,et al.  Jane Austen, Game Theorist , 2012 .

[26]  M. Schlossberg.  Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions. , 1990 .

[27]  W. Stephens,et al.  A history of the county of Warwick , 1955 .

[28]  O. K. Davis.  Released for publication : some inside political history of Theodore Roosevelt and his times, 1898-1918 , 1925 .

[29]  Adam Roberts.  Middlemarch , 2022 .