The Use of Deception in Negotiation

To deceive or not to deceive? This is a fundamental dilemma for negotiators. In most negotiations, the parties have incomplete and private information and thus face an information dilemma. Namely, revealing information facilitates value creation, but may inhibit value claiming by exposing negotiators to the possibility of being exploited by their counterpart (Aquino, 1998; Murnighan, Babcock, Thompson, & Pillutla, 1999). Honesty may be the best policy for creating value, but it increases personal risk. Consequently, negotiators face the temptation to engage in deception as a self-protective strategy (Dees & Cramton, 1991).

By definition, deception intentionally misleads another party in a way that implicitly provides an advantage to the deceiver (Aquino, 1998; Boles et al., 2000; Lewicki, 1982). Deception can be an active process, as when individuals misrepresent a situation by giving false information, or a passive one, as when individuals conceal information (Bok, 1978; Ekman, 2001). These two forms of deception are frequently referred to in the negotiation literature as sins of commission and sins of omission, respectively (Murnighan et al., 1999; O’Connor & Carnevale, 1997; Schweitzer & Croson, 1999; Spranca, Minsk & Baron, 1991).

Any situation that has a competitive element, including negotiations, is likely to involve deception (Aquino & Becker, 2005; Hegarty & Sims, 1978; Lewicki, Saunders & Minton, 1999; Murnighan, 1991; Tenbrunsel, 1998). However, still relatively little is understood about the factors that trigger deception in negotiation. In the early 90s, research by Lewicki et al. (1994) and by Murnighan (1991) identified four factors driving deception in negotiation: greed, competition, uncertainty and experienced injustice. Because of these factors, self-interested negotiators are likely to deceive their counterpart so that they can reach better outcomes for themselves (Boles et al., 2000). These drivers have received empirical support over the last two decades. For instance, Lewicki and Spencer (1990) found that negotiators who expect to negotiate with a competitive counterpart are more willing to deceive than negotiators who expect to negotiate with a cooperative counterpart.

In addition to these four main drivers, prior research on deception has suggested that the characteristics of the individual and the situation will affect individuals’ propensity to deceive, either alone or in interaction (e.g., Hegarty & Sims, 1978; Lewicki, 1982; Schweitzer & Croson, 1999; Trevino, 1986). They are higher for males (Robinson, Lewicki & Donahue, 2000), in dyads with high cognitive trust (Olekalns & Smith, 2009), for negotiators with an individualistic orientation (O’Connor & Carnevale, 1997; see also De Dreu & Van Lange, 1995), and in bargaining contexts where the victims are powerless and anonymous (Tenbrunsel & Diekmann, 2007).

Regardless of the reasons motivating deception in negotiation, once negotiators intentionally misrepresent information at the bargaining table they recruit various justifications for their unethical actions (see Ayal & Gino, 2011 for a discussion of justifications individuals generally use after cheating). For instance, they may justify their actions by convincing themselves that their counterpart did not have good intentions and was likely going to lie in the negotiation as well (Tenbrunsel, 1998). In related research on lying, Sagarin, Rhoads, and Cialdini (1998) found that after lying to another person, the liar is more likely to judge the person being lied to as less honest compared to other individuals. These results indicate that individuals’ temptation to deceive their counterpart bias their perception of the other parties’ intentions, thus leading to a potentially vicious cycle (Boles et al., 2000).

Importantly, negotiation research has also identified ways through which deception can be attenuated. For instance, deception is less likely to occur when mutual interests are uncovered by the parties negotiating (O’Connor & Carnevale, 1997), when negotiations occur face-to-face rather than over email (Valley, Moag & Bazerman, 1998), when ethical standards are salient (Aquino, 1998), in negotiations where parties have high affective trust (Olekalns & Smith, 2009), and when negotiators ask direct rather than indirect questions to their counterparts

(Schweitzer & Croson, 1999).

Over the years, then, this body of work has uncovered important antecedents of deception and has also identified conditions under which deception can be reduced. One question that has received less attention to date is how emotions affect negotiator behavior (Brooks-Wood & Schweitzer, 2011), and deception more specifically. During a negotiation, parties are likely to experience different emotions, or they may approach the negotiation with particularly good or bad feelings (e.g., anger or anxiety). In fact, the conflict nature that is often embedded in negotiations makes discussions at the bargaining table frequently emotional and/or contentious (Barry, 1999; Barry & Oliver, 1996). The emotions that negotiators “bring to the table” can greatly impact their decision making, their strategies and their actions (Frijda, 1986; BrooksWood & Schweitzer, 2011), and, as a result, the subsequent negotiated outcomes. How do emotions influence negotiators’ behavior? And, more specifically, what is the impact of the emotions negotiators experience during the negotiation on their likelihood to deceive their counterpart?

In the remainder of the chapter, we address these questions and examine ways in which emotions affect deception. We first review existing work on the role of emotions in negotiation more generally, and then identify areas that have not yet received attention in the literature and that could provide fruitful venues for future research.

Emotions in negotiations

Over the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in studying the influence of discrete emotions in negotiation. Some of this work has focused on developing theoretical arguments or frameworks regarding the role of affect and affective processes in negotiation (e.g., Allred, 1999; Barry & Oliver, 1996; Davidson & Greenhalgh, 1999; Lawler & Yoon, 1995; Morris & Keltner, 2000; Thompson et al., 1999). Other work, instead, has focused on empirical studies with emotions in negotiation as the central focus (e.g., Baron, 1990; Carnevale & Isen, 1986; Friedman et al., 2004; Kramer, Newton, & Pommerenke, 1993; Shapiro, 1991; Shapiro & Bies, 1994; Sinaceur & Tiedens, 2006; Steinel et al., 2008).

In approaching emotion research, it is important to keep clear definitions in mind. Although these terms are at times used loosely, emotions and moods are distinct constructs in the literature on emotions; affect is a third, related construct that generally includes the other two. Emotions involve physiological arousal that arises in response to specific events or situational stimuli (Parrott, 2001; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). Emotions are more specific, differentiated and also of shorter duration than moods, which are defined as diffuse feelings of either positive or negative valence that are both enduring and pervasive (Forgas, 1992; 1998). Both emotions and moods are important in the study of negotiation, since negotiations generally give rise to many emotions.

Early research in negotiation focused on the role of mood and found that, in general, positive moods are associated with cooperative behavior (Barry & Oliver, 1996); they increase concession making, and they elicit creative problem-solving (Baron et al., 1990; Forgas, 1995; 1998). Instead, negative moods are associated with competitive behavior (Barry & Oliver, 1996); they decrease initial offers as well as joint gains, and they increase the use of self-interested and competitive strategies at the bargaining table (Pillutla & Murnighan, 1996).

More recently, negotiation research has started to examine the role of discrete emotions rather than mood, but the research is still sparse. To date, anger and happiness are the most commonly studied emotions in negotiations (e.g., Allred et al., 1997; Van Dijk et al., 2008; Van Kleef et al., 2004), while other emotions have not yet received a lot of research attention. The empirical studies on the effects of emotion in negotiation that have been conducted so far have found that positive emotions help negotiators create value and reduce contentious behavior, whereas other-directed anger has the opposite effect (for a review, see Barry, Fulmer, & Van Kleef, 2004). Yet, several questions regarding the emotional side of negotiation are still unanswered. We identify a few of these questions in the remainder of the chapter.

Morris and Keltner (2000) proposed two different approaches to integrating emotion into negotiation. The first is the affect and cognition perspective, which focuses on the intrapersonal processes that emotions evoke (e.g., how does a focal negotiator act under the influence of a particular emotion?). The second is the social-functional perspective, which focuses on the interpersonal processes that emotions facilitate (e.g., how does a focal negotiator influence the dyad as a whole under the influence of a particular emotion?). Thus, while intrapersonal research focuses on the effects that emotions experienced by a negotiator have on his/her behavior, interpersonal research focuses on the effects that the negotiator’s emotions have on his/her counterpart.

In this chapter, we focus exclusively on the affect and cognition perspective, and examine how the felt emotions of the focal negotiator increase or reduce the use of deception. However, we see research following the social-functional perspective to be crucial in the understanding of negotiators’ behavior at the bargaining table. We hope that future work will dedicate research attention to this important line of investigation.

Assignments

1. Explain the main idea of the text.

2. Make in pairs dialogues using this text.

3. What does the term ‘deception in negotiations’ mean?

4. Find a paragraph where this term used and translate it.

5. Try to make your own sentences using this expression.

6. Make a conclusion to this article using this expression.

7. If you have a possibility to deceive in negotiations, would you?

8. How does the mood affect negotiations?

9. Have you ever had an experience of negotiations?

10. Summarize the text.

Text 5