What Shall We Discuss? Understanding the Perception and Sharing of Negotiation Information

Abstract: Negotiators need to decide what to discuss and their choices have large implications for whether they form integrative agreements. To satisfy their interests, negotiators need to communicate them to their counterparts yet often fail to do so. We develop theory and describe three studies offering evidence that negotiators typically find information about interests to be less relevant than other key information, such as limits, and so less critical to share. When they do see interests as more relevant, they are more likely to form integrative agreements. Relevance interacts with risk to predict the likelihood of sharing information. Questions are a tool for changing relevance perceptions and so encouraging the likelihood of sharing interests. Considering relevance expands research on information exchange and could encourage negotiation research to differentiate processes for forming integrative agreements in well-defined and ill-defined negotiation situations.

Keywords: Negotiation, Integrative agreements, Information sharing, Interests, Relevance perception