NEGOTIATING UNDER THE INFLUENCE

“Emotional hangovers – strong feelings unrelated to the negotiation at hand – can distort your judgement and lead to bad decisions.”

Imagine you are about to sit on the negotiation table – but you’re in a terrible mood – your car on the way was hit by a distracted driver talking on his cell phone. As you begin to bargain, the thought of repairs and insurance claims keeps coming back to irritate you. You’re actually seething in anger, but you continue to believe that you do not allow your rage to come in the way of your task at hand. Yet, research shows it is unlikely. Emotions alter our thoughts, behavior, and underlying biology. It isn’t unknown that feelings arising from the stress of the negotiation itself as above, ‘Integral emotions’, impact outcomes. What is less known or probably ignored is the far-reaching effect of ‘incidental emotions’ or emotional hangovers on negotiation!

While anger is the predominant incidental emotion, sadness and disgust are equally crippling. Study shows, display of anger can have powerful effect. We tend to perceive those who express it as threatening, dominant, or even competent and powerful. A negotiator often falls prey to yielding more to an angry counterpart. Conversely, some people vouch for the efficacy of maintaining power by displaying anger after making a mistake instead of expression of remorse.

Three strategies help prevent emotional hangovers from impairing our judgement:

  1. Accountability: Accountability and ownership can considerably reduce the harmsassociated with incidental emotions. Research on participants, made incidentally angry with induced triggers, revealed that only those who were held accountable for the accuracy of their judgements made decisions unbiased by their anger. In negotiation, the best kind of accountability requires both parties to agree in advance that they will individually and privately justify their decision processes to an impartial audience or neutral colleagues. Mediation can be effective, but learning to reduce one’s own bias can improve results even if the other party remains affected by incidental emotions.
  1. Defusing incidental emotions. Making of a decision depends largely on our emotionalstate and feelings. If we can identify and label the source of an incidental emotion, then chances of it impacting our negotiation decisions are also  Norbert Schwarz of the University of Southern California and Gerald Clore of the University of Virginia had conducted a telephonic survey about life satisfaction. Participants who were called up on a bright sunny day were more positive on their take on life satisfaction, while respondents on a rainy day reported significantly less life satisfaction. Interestingly, when researchers began the call by asking about the weather, participants in the rainy condition responded pretty much with the same level of positivity as their counterparts. Thus, acknowledging bad weather defused its impact on their understanding and approach to the survey. To recognize and defuse our own emotional hangovers, we need to develop awareness of negative emotions that we may be experiencing. A study by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University revealed many Americans become distressed when commuting or even talking to their bosses. Awareness of such a possibility can improve our odds of recognizing and avoiding false steps. On the negotiation table, if we suspect the other side’s feelings are incidental to the negotiation, encouraging them to draw a connection to the source of these feelings work well. An opening gambit, such as, “Terrible day out, isn’t it?” can help minimize the influence of negative emotions on judgements and choices.
  1. Seeking a cooling-off period: George Lowenstein of Carnegie Mellon used his “hot-coldempathy gap” to explain when we’re in a ‘hot’ (angry or upset) state, we incorrectly predict what we would want in a ‘cold’ (calm and rational) state, and vice versa. ‘Miswanting’ is a similar notion developed by Dan Gilbert of Harvard University. The best way to avoid succumbing in a negotiation as a result of incidental emotion is by instituting a cooling off period, for the feelings to  If you suspect your counterpart is experiencing incidental emotions, you might suggest postponing the difficult stages of the negotiation until after break.

While emotions such as anger drive us to act immediately, we must resist the urge to act impulsively, instead of suppressing the emotion itself. An effective negotiator proceeds by separating integral emotion from incidental ones, which in itself is the first proactive step towards positive outcomes.

October 2016

Based on Harvard Business Review South Asia OnPoint August 2015 – January 2016, ‘Negotiation Under the Influence’ by Jennifer S. Lerner, professor of public policy and management at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and cofounder of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory

By Aidias Conuslting Group