BazermanMoore

178 Chapter 10: Negotiator Cognition
CONCLUSIONS
Chapters 9 and 10 have offered an overview of what is commonly known as the decision
perspective to negotiation, which can be traced to Raiffa’s ‘‘asymmetrically prescriptive/
descriptive’’ approach to negotiation. In his groundbreaking 1982 book The Art and
Science of Negotiation, Raiffa focused on providing the best advice to a focal negotiator
(prescriptive) based on the best possible description of the likely behavior of the negotiator’s
opponent (descriptive). Raiffa’s work represented a turning point in negotiation
research for a number of reasons. First, by departing from game-theoretic perspectives
that assumed full rationality by all parties, Raiffa explicitly acknowledged the importance
of developing accurate descriptions of opponents. In addition, his realization that
negotiators need advice implicitly acknowledged the fact that we do not intuitively follow
purely rational strategies. Finally, Raiffa initiated the groundwork for a dialogue
between prescriptive and descriptive researchers, which we have overviewed in these
last two chapters.
Chapter 9 provided the basic analytic structure for Raiffa’s prescriptive analysis,
while Chapter 10 dealt with questions that Raiffa’s work left unexamined. For example,
if the negotiator and his or her opponent do not act rationally, what systematic departures
from rationality result? A successful negotiator will use descriptive models to anticipate
the likely behavior of the opponent and to identify errors to avoid in his or her
own negotiation behavior.