Regulatory Focus at the Bargaining Table: Promoting Distributive and Integrative Success

Abstract

The authors demonstrate that in dyadic negotiations, negotiators with a promotion regulatory focus achieve superior outcomes than negotiators with prevention regulatory focus in two ways. First, a promotion focus leads negotiators to claim more resources at the bargaining table. In the first two studies, promotion-focused negotiators paid more attention to their target prices(i.e., their ideal outcomes) and achieved more advantageous distributive outcomes than did prevention-focused negotiators. The second study also reveals an important mediating process: Negotiators with a promotion focus made more extreme opening offers in their favor. Second, a promotion focus leads negotiators to create more resources at the bargaining table that benefit both parties. A third study demonstrated that in a multi-issue negotiation, a promotion focus increased the likelihood that a dyad achieved a jointly optimal or Pareto efficient outcome compared to prevention-focused dyads. The discussion focuses on the role of regulatory focus in social interaction and introduces the notion of interaction fit.

Availability Bias Can Improve Women’s Propensity to Negotiate

“…In what researchers have identified as additive counterfactual thinking (Kray, Galinsky & Markman, 2009;Kray et al, 2010), individuals identify regrets over failed opportunities to negotiate, gaining competitive advantage in future negotiations (Galinsky, Seiden, Kim & Medvec, 2002;Galinsky, Leonardelli, Okhuysen & Mussweiler, 2005). Together, availability, anchoring, priming, and counterfactual thinking can work to encourage women to make higher first offers, become more aggressive negotiators, and enable them to free themselves from the sticky floor, mid-level bottleneck, and glass ceiling alike.…”

Regulatory focus and interdependent economic decision-making

“…This paper offers an explanation for this phenomenon using regulatory focus theory -i.e., a theory of how individuals approach self-interest. importantly, for our purposes, it affects interdependent economic decision-making: in negotiations, a promotion compared to prevention focus led negotiators to set higher aspirations, negotiate more aggressively, and achieve better joint and personal outcomes (Galinsky, Leonardelli, Okhuysen, & Mussweiler, 2005).From the lens of existing theories on self-interest, it is tempting to conclude from Galinsky et al 's (2005) data that a prevention focus leads to a greater "prosocial" than "proself" orientation (Deutsch, 1973) or a weaker motivation for self-interest (Siegel & Fouraker, 1960).However, this paper offers an alternative perspective: regulatory focus affects the kinds of economic outcomes (i.e., absolute or relative) individuals pursue. Building on research on regulatory focus and goal pursuit (e.g., Crowe & Higgins, 1997;Friedman, 1999), we argue that a promotion focus motivates decision-makers to maximize absolute economic outcomes, but a prevention focus motivates them to consider relative outcomes.…”

A Sociocognitive View of Repeated Interfirm Exchanges: How the Coevolution of Trust and Learning Impacts Subsequent Contracts

“…However, if it is missed, they feel low-intensity disappointment. The desire to experience high-intensity happiness overshadows the aspiration to avoid low intensity disappointment, resulting in a focus on promoting positive performance through creative and integrative behavior (Galinsky et al, 2005).…”

“…Interpretations of positive behavior once again trigger shallow cognitive processing, which leads to internal attributions supporting prior beliefs that the partner firm has integrity. Furthermore, the partner firm's outgroup status is much less salient under a promotion contract, as the two parties work together to accomplish the exchange goal (Galinsky et al, 2005). Thus, intergroup attribution bias is reduced, further supporting attributions of positive behavior to the partner's integrity.…”