The Psychology of Non-Negotiables

Abstract: Non-negotiables, public, issue-level boundary statements that remove a topic from possible tradeoffs while leaving other issues open, have been increasingly encouraged as a way to communicate boundaries in both personal and organizational contexts. Despite this, we still lack a psychological account of how observers interpret the declarations of non-negotiables. We propose that the explicit assertion of non-negotiables functions as a boundary signal that shapes inferences about both the negotiation counterpart and the negotiation deal. In a prototype analysis, we found that participants spontaneously associated “non-negotiable” with value- or principle-based concerns and with strong rigidity cues, suggesting a shared lay meaning beyond simple refusal. In a recall study, we found that perceived legitimacy of the non-negotiable lowers fixed pie perception and willingness to continue the negotiation on that issue, while perceived dominance of the counterpart increases fixed pie perception without affecting the willingness to continue. This research has implications for research on negotiation and boundary communication.

Keywords: Non-negotiables. Legitimacy. Dominance. Experiments. Archival Data