BazermanMoore

176 Chapter 10: Negotiator Cognition
Participants were told that a given total harvest level was sustainable, enabling the species
to reproduce itself at its current population level; if the total harvest rose above the
given level, the species would suffer further depletion. Harvesting above the sustainable
level decreased opportunities for future harvesting, resulting in a net decrease in
total profit.
A characteristic of virtually all real-world social dilemmas is asymmetry in the parties’
contribution to the problem and their willingness to cooperate with proposed solutions.
Asymmetry allows negotiators to indulge in idiosyncratic self-serving biases
about the fairness of resource distribution. To capture this asymmetry in the simulation,
participants were told that their organizations placed different weights on the importance
of future shark harvests. Specifically, those participants who represented
commercial fishing groups harvested relatively large numbers of shark and had a relatively
low interest in the future health of the resource. By contrast, the representatives
of recreational fishing groups harvested fewer shark and had a very strong interest in
the resource’s future. Consistent with the real-world situation, participants were told
that the commercial groups were better equipped than the recreational groups to
switch to a different kind of fish should the shark resource be depleted.
After receiving the information just described, but before their simulated conference,
the participants recorded what they personally believed to be a fair solution to the
crisis. During the thirty-minute conference that followed, participants discussed the
issues and potential solutions, but did not make binding commitments. Participants
were again asked to make individual fairness judgments following the conference. Selfserving
interpretations of fairness were the common pattern in this asymmetric resource
dilemma. In addition, the researchers found that the amount of harvesting carried
out by each group was positively related to the strength of the level of self-serving
biases. Discussion of the issues reduced the magnitude of self-serving biases, thereby
increasing cooperation.
This research strongly suggests that asymmetry is a key driver of self-serving biases
and overharvesting. Real-world resource dilemmas represent a critical area where ambiguity
enables individuals to justify what they want to do (take a larger share of a limited
resource) instead of what they should do (practice self-restraint). The source of the
problem is not our desire to be unfair, but our difficulty interpreting information in an
unbiased manner (Messick & Sentis, 1983). Communication-building strategies, including
asking questions, seeking tradeoffs, and making concessions, are the key to reducing
self-serving biases and creating negotiated solutions that benefit not only the
interested parties, but society as a whole.
ANCHORING IN NEGOTIATIONS
From Chapter 2, we know that people tend to be overly affected by an initial anchor,
without realizing this effect. Northcraft and Neale (1987) surveyed real-estate brokers
who claimed they could assess the value of a property to within 5 percent of the true or
appraised value. These brokers were unanimous in stating that, when looking at an actual
house on the market, they did not factor the listing price of the property into their
personal estimate of its ‘‘true’’ value. Northcraft and Neale then asked the brokers, and