BazermanMoore

Self-Serving Biases in Negotiation 175
importance of these arguments as perceived ‘‘by a neutral third party.’’ There was a
strong tendency to view arguments supporting one’s own position as more convincing
than those supporting the other side, suggesting that the bias operates by distorting
one’s interpretation of evidence. Consistent with this finding, when the parties were
presented with their roles (plaintiff or defendant) only after reading the case materials,
the magnitude of the bias was substantially reduced and almost all of the pairs reached
rapid agreement on damages.
Self-serving biases are just as pervasive and detrimental to negotiated settlements
in disputes involving more than two parties. Much of the findings regarding self-serving
biases and multiparty negotiations concern the decisions of individuals involved in
social dilemmas. In a vivid illustration of a social dilemma, Hardin (1968) offered a
parable of a group of herdsmen grazing their cattle in a common pasture. Each herdsman
knows that it is to his advantage to increase the size of his herd because each
additional animal represents personal profit. However, the cost of grazing, measured
by the damage done to the pasture, is shared by all of the herdsmen. If the total number
of animals becomes too large, the pasture will be overpopulated and eventually will
be destroyed. Thus, the herdsmen have a collective interest in setting individual limits
to the number of cattle grazing in the pasture to a degree that matches the rate of
pasture replenishment. At the same time, it is in each herdsman’s interest to marginally
expand his grazing cattle beyond his allotment. Hardin’s parable has a parallel in negotiation.
While each negotiator may suspect that overestimating what she deserves could
improve her chances of getting more of what she wants, it also should be clear that as
each person’s demands increase, so does the probability of not reaching any deal at all.
Many of the natural-resource scarcity and pollution issues that we face in contemporary
society resemble Hardin’s ‘‘tragedy of the commons.’’ Wade-Benzoni, Tenbrunsel,
and Bazerman (1996) created a social-dilemma simulation in which a group shares
a common, scarce resource—in this case, ocean shark—from which individual members
can harvest. This simulation is based on the real-life fishery crisis in the northeastern
United States, where species of principal groundfish have been depleted by
overfishing, resulting in considerable uncertainty as to when and how they will be
brought back to a sustainable level. The two most critical issues facing fishery management
are (1) who will pay the cost of reversing the crisis and (2) who will receive the
subsequent benefits. Thus, the northeastern fishery captures the range of issues inherent
in managing any commonly held resource. As in any social dilemma, individuals
must choose between personal and group concerns. The group’s best interest lies in
limited harvesting, but personal interests may induce individual members to harvest
excessively.
In the shark simulation, participants were assigned roles as representatives of organizations
that relied on shark fishing for income. The representatives were gathering
for a conference aimed at finding a solution to their common problem, the depletion of
large coastal shark. All participants were told that they had two goals: (1) to maximize
current profit without depleting the harvest pool to a level that would be too low to
provide future harvests and (2) to maximize the net present value of the profit that their
associations would receive. This profit would be broken up into two components: profit
received from the current harvest and profit expected from future harvests.