AI Roleplays in Negotiation: Moving Beyond the “Cool Factor” to Evidence-Based Teaching

Abstract: This study examines how students experience and evaluate AI-supported negotiation roleplays in management education. Drawing on survey and reflective data from 295 AI-mediated negotiation exercises conducted across undergraduate and graduate business courses, we investigated three questions: How do learners respond emotionally to negotiating with an AI tutor? How do they perceive the learning value of AI roleplays and AI-generated feedback? And how do these experiences compare to learning from peers and instructors? Results indicate that negotiating with an AI tutor elicits an emotional trajectory similar to that of human negotiations. Students report perceived learning from both AI roleplays and AI-generated feedback, particularly when the AI counterpart is perceived as fair and trustworthy. Undergraduate students, in particular, report learning as much or more from AI-supported practice than from peer-based roleplays. We discuss implications for negotiation pedagogy and the role of AI tutors as a scalable complement to human-centered instruction.

Keywords: negotiation, learning, teaching, artificial intelligence, roleplay, emotions