Opening Statement Effects in Negotiations

Opening statements are known to the most of us as an obligatory part of legal proceedings. Legal science has focused on this communication technique’s impact for ages and is awarding it as a crucial technique of the persuasion process. However, virtually no empirical research has been conducted on opening statement effects in negotiations. This is astonishing, as the application of persuasive communication techniques is a key element of every negotiation’s interactive process to manipulate the counterpart towards own preferences. To the best of our knowledge, our study is unique in examining the effects of opening statements on the negotiation process and outcome. Our experiment significantly proves that the negotiation opening statement has a positive impact on the first concession and subsequently on the negotiation process and outcome. Consequently, negotiators are well-advised to enter negotiations directly with an opening statement instead of, contrary to the existing research state, non-directly relationship-promoting.