Procedural Frames in Negotiations:How Offering My Resources vs. Requesting Yours Impacts Perception, Behavior & Outcomes

Although abundant negotiation research has examined outcome frames, little is known about the procedural framing of negotiation proposals (i.e., offering my vs. requesting your resources). In a series of 8 experiments, we tested the prediction that negotiators would show a stronger concession aversion and attain better individual outcomes when their own resource, rather than the counterpart's, is the accentuated reference resource in a transaction. First, senders of proposals revealed a stronger concession aversion when they offered their own rather than requested the counterpart's resources- both in buyer-seller (Experiment 1a) and in classic transaction negotiations (Experiment 2a). Expectedly, this effect reversed for recipients: When receiving requests rather than offers, recipients experienced a stronger concession aversion in buyer-seller (Experiment 1b) and transaction negotiations (Experiment 2b). Experiments 3-5 investigated procedural frames in the interactive process of negotiations-with elementary schoolchildren (Experiment 3), in a buyer-seller context (Experiments 4a and 4b), and in a computer-mediated transaction negotiation void of buyer and seller roles (Experiment 5). In summary, 8 experiments showed that negotiators are more concession averse and claim more individual value when negotiation proposals are framed to highlight their own rather than the counterpart's resources. © 2015 American Psychological Association.