BASICS
What
DEFINITION
PERCEPTION PROCESS CHART
Perception
Stimulus
Attention Recognition
Transition
Behavior
PERCEPTUAL DISTORTION
SELECTIVE PERCEPTION AND PROJECTION
FRAMING
TYPES OF FRAMES
HOW FRAMES WORK
INTERESTS, RIGHTS, AND POWER
CHANGING
FRAMES
ADVICE ABOUT PROBLEM FRAMING
COGNITIVE BIASES
IRRATIONAL ESCALATION OF COMMITMENT AND MYTHICAL
FIXED-PIE BELIEFS
ANCHORING AND ADJUSTMENT AND ISSUE FRAMING AND
RISK
AVAILABILITY OF INFORMATION AND THE WINNER'S CURSE
OVERCONFIDENCE AND THE LAW OF SMALL NUMBERS
SELF-SERVING BIASES AND ENDOWMENT EFFECT
IGNORING OTHERS' COGNITIONS AND REACTIVE
DEVALUATION
MANAGING MISPERCEPTIONS AND COGNITIVE BIASES IN
NEGOTIATION
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The basic building blocks of all social encounters are:
Perception
Cognition
Framing
Cognitive biases
Emotion
Perception defined:
The process by which individuals connect to their environment.
A complex physical and psychological processA
"sense-making" process
Perception
The process of ascribing meaning to messages and events is strongly
influenced by the perceiver's current state of mind, role, and comprehension
of earlier communications.
- People interpret
their environment in order to respond appropriately
- The complexity of
environments makes it impossible to process all
of the information
- People develop shortcuts to process information and these
shortcuts create perceptual errors
PERCEPTUAL DISTORTION
• Four major perceptual errors:
■ Stereotyping
■ Halo effects
■ Selective perception
■ Projection
Selective perception:
■ Perpetuates stereotypes or halo
effects
■ The perceiver singles out
information that supports a prior belief but filters out contrary information
Projection:
■ Arises out of a need to protect
one's own self-concept
■ People assign to others the
characteristics or feelings that they possess themselves
FRAMING
Frames:
■ Represent the subjective mechanism through which people evaluate
and make sense out of situations
■ Lead people to pursue or avoid
subsequent actions
■ Focus, shape and organize the world
around us
■ Make sense of complex realities
■ Define a person, event or process
■ Impart meaning and significance
TYPES OF FRAMES
•Substantive
•Outcome
•Aspiration
•Process
•Identity
•Characterization
•Loss-Gain
HOW FRAMES WORK IN NEGOTIATION
•Negotiators can use more than one frame
•Mismatches in frames between parties are sources of conflict
•Particular types of frames may lead to particular types of arguments
•Specific frames may be likely to be used with certain types of
issues
•Parties are likely to assume a particular frame because of various factors
INTERESTS, RIGHTS, AND POWER
Parties
in conflict use one of three frames:
• Interests: people
talk about their "positions" but often what is at stake is their
underlying interests
• Rights: people may
be concerned about who is "right" - that is, who has legitimacy,
who is correct, and what is fair
• Power: people may
wish to resolve a conflict
on the basis of who is stronger
THE FRAME OF AN ISSUE CHANGES AS THE NEGOTIATION
EVOLVES
Negotiators tend to argue for stock issues or
concerns that are raised every time the parties negotiate
Each party attempts to make the best possible case
for his or her preferred position or perspective
Frames may define major shifts and transitions in
a complex overall negotiation
Multiple agenda items operate to shape issue
development
SOME ADVICE ABOUT PROBLEM FRAMING FOR NEGOTIATORS
•Frames shape what the parties define as the key
issues and how they talk about them
Both parties have frames
Frames are controllable, at least to some degree
Conversations change and
transform frames in ways negotiators may not be able to predict but
may be able to control
Certain frames are more likely than others to lead to certain types of processes and outcomes
COGNITIVE BIASES
Irrational escalation of commitment
Mythical fixed-pie beliefs
Anchoring and adjustment
Issue framing and risk
Availability of information
The winner's curse
Overconfidence
The law of small numbers
Self-serving biases
Endowment effect
Ignoring others' cognitions
Reactive devaluation
IRRATIONAL ESCALATION OF COMMITMENT AND MYTHICAL
FIXED-PIE BELIEFS
Irrational escalation of commitment
Negotiators
maintain commitment to a course of action even when that commitment
constitutes irrational behavior
Mythical fixed-pie beliefs
Negotiators
assume that all negotiations (not just some) involve a fixed pie
ANCHORING AND ADJUSTMENT AND ISSUE FRAMING AND
RISK
Anchoring and adjustment
The
effect of the standard (anchor) against which subsequent adjustments (gains
or losses) are measured
The
anchor might be based on faulty or incomplete information, thus be misleading
Issue framing and risk
Frames
can lead people to seek, avoid, or be neutral about risk in decision making
and negotiation
AVAILABILITY OF INFORMATION AND THE WINNER'S CURSE
Availability of information
Operates
when information that is presented in vivid or attention-getting ways becomes
easy to recall.
Becomes
central and critical in evaluating events and options
The winner's curse
The
tendency to settle quickly on an item and then subsequently feel discomfort
about a win that comes too easily
OVERCONFIDENCE AND THE LAW OF SMALL NUMBERS
•Overconfidence
The tendency of negotiators to believe that
their ability to be correct or accurate is greater than is actually true
The law
of small numbers
The
tendency of people to draw conclusions from small sample sizes
The
smaller sample, the greater the possibility that past lessons will be
erroneously used to infer what will happen in the future |
SELF-SERVING BIASES AND ENDOWMENT EFFECT
Self-serving biases
People
often explain another person's behavior by making attributions, either to the
person or to the situation
The tendency, known as fundamental attribution error, is to:
Overestimate
the role of personal or internal factors
Underestimate
the role of situational or external factors
Endowment effect
The
tendency to overvalue something you own or believe you possess
IGNORING OTHERS' COGNITIONS AND REACTIVE
DEVALUATION
Ignoring others' cognitions
Negotiators
don't bother to ask about the other party's perceptions and thoughts
This
leaves them to work with incomplete information, and thus produces faulty
results
Reactive devaluation
The
process of devaluing the other party's concessions simply because the other
party made them
MANAGING MISPERCEPTIONS AND COGNITIVE BIASES IN
NEGOTIATION
The best advice that negotiators can follow is:
Be
aware of the negative aspects of these biases
Discuss
them in a structured manner within the team and with counterparts
MOOD, EMOTION, AND NEGOTIATION
The
distinction between mood and emotion is based on three characteristics:
Specificity
Intensity
Duration
Negotiations create both positive and negative
emotions
Positive
emotions generally have positive consequences for negotiations
They
are more likely to lead the parties toward more integrative processes
They
also create a positive attitude toward the other side
They
promote persistence
They
set the stage for successful subsequent negotiations
Aspects of the negotiation process can lead to
positive emotions
Positive
feelings result from fair procedures during negotiation
Positive
feelings result from favorable social comparison
• Negative emotions generally have negative
consequences for negotiations
They
may lead parties to define the situation as competitive or distributive
They
may undermine a negotiator's ability to analyze the situation accurately,
which adversely affects individual outcomes
They
may lead parties to escalate the conflict
They may lead parties to retaliate and
may thwart integrative outcomes
Aspects of the negotiation process can lead to
negative emotions
Negative
emotions may result from a competitive mind-set
Negative
emotions may result from an impasse
Negative
emotions may result from the prospect of beginning a negotiation
Effects of positive and negative emotion
Positive
emotions may generate negative outcomes
Negative
feelings may elicit beneficial outcomes
Emotions can be used strategically as [
negotiation gambits
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