How biases in business negotiations affect results
01 After a negotiation your memories could be off from the presented facts
Suggestibility
in negotiations means being inclined to accept and act on suggestions of others, even where the information is false, but plausible.
False memory
is a psychological phenomenon, where in the negotiations you recall things that did not happen, or differently from the way it happened.
Misattribution of memory
in negotiations refers to the ability to remember information correctly, but being wrong about the source.
02 In negotiations you discard details to form generalities
Negativity bias
in negotiations is the notion that negative elements have a greater effect on your psychological state, than neutral or positive things.
Prejudice
in negotiations is your preconceived feeling towards a person based solely on that person’s group membership, being social class, age, culture, etc.
The generalization
of the opposing person at the negotiating table, because you assume the stereotype is true for each individual person in the group.
03 You reduce negotiation events to key elements
Primacy and recency effect
in negotiations refers to the phenomenon that the first and last terms of a list are best remembered.
List and length effect
in negotiations refers to the finding that recognition performance for a short list is superior to that for a long list.
Peak–end rule
in negotiations is a phenomenon in which you judge the experience based on how you felt at its climax and the end, rather than the whole experience.
04 You store negotiation memories differently based on how you experienced them
Misinformation effect
in negotiations happens when your memories becomes less accurate, because of post-event information.
Next-in-line effect
in negotiations is the phenomena where you are unable to recall information concerning events immediately preceding your turn to perform.
Absent-mindedness
in negotiations means that you are so lost in thought that you do not realize what you are doing and what is happening around you.
Information overload
01 In negotiations you primarily notice things already memorized or repeated often
Availability heuristic
in negotiations promotes that if something can be recalled, it must be important, at least more important than alternative solutions.
Illusory truth effect
(also known as the validity effect) in business negotiations is the tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure.
Empathy gap
in business negotiations is the tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of positive and negative feelings, in either oneself or others.
Omission bias
in negotiations is the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, than equally harmful omissions (inactions), because actions are more obvious than inactions.
02 Extraordinary things in negotiations stick out more than common things
Picture superiority effect
in business negotiations refers to the phenomenon in which images are more likely to be remembered than words.
Negativity bias
in negotiations is a psychological phenomenon, by which you have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories.
03 You notice when something has changed during the negotiation process
Anchoring
in negotiations is the tendency to rely heavily on the “anchor”, usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject, when making decisions.
Conservatism
or belief revision in negotiations is the tendency to revise your belief insufficiently, when presented with new clear evidence.
Framing effect
in negotiations means that parties draw different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented.
Money illusion
in business negotiations is the tendency to concentrate on the nominal value of money, rather than its real value in terms of purchasing power.
04 You are drawn to negotiation details confirming your existing beliefs
Confirmation bias
in business negotiations is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information that confirm your preconceptions.
Post-purchase rationalization
in business negotiations is the tendency to persuade yourself through rational argument that a purchase was good value.
Expectation bias
is to believe and act on data that agree with your expectations for the negotiation outcome and to discard data that conflicts with those expectations.
05 In negotiations you notice flaws in others more easily than flaws in yourself
Bias blind spot
in business negotiations is the tendency to see yourself as less biased, than other people.
Naïve cynicism
in business negotiations is the expectation of more egocentric bias in others than in oneself.
Naïve realism
belief in negotiations means that you see reality as it really is and the facts are clear to all parties. Those who don’t are uninformed, irrational, or biased.
Not enough value
01 Even in sparse negotiation data you find stories and patterns
Neglect of probability
in business negotiations is the tendency to completely disregard probability, when making a decision under uncertainty.
Illusion of validity
that our judgments are accurate in business negotiations, especially when available information is consistent and correlated.
Gambler’s fallacy
in negotiations is the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged.
Hot-hand fallacy
in negotiations is the belief that if you have experienced success with a random event, you have a greater chance of success in additional attempts.
02 Filling in negotiation elements from stereotypes and generalities
Groupthink
in negotiations occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony and conformity results in irrational or dysfunctional decision-making.
Just-world hypothesis
in negotiations is the tendency for you to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just, causing you to rationalize inexplicable injustice.
Authority bias
in business negotiations is the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure and be more influenced by that opinion.
Bandwagon effect
in negotiations is the herd mentality to do or believe things, because many other people do or believe the same.
03 During negotiations you imagine things and people you are familiar with as better
Not invented here
in negotiations is the aversion to contact with or use of products, research, standards, or knowledge developed outside a group.
Reactive devaluation
in business negotiations is the devaluing of proposals, only because they are originated by your adversary.
04 You simplify probabilities and numbers to make negotiations easier to understand
Normalcy bias
in negotiations is the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before in business deals.
Survivorship bias
in negotiations is concentrating on the people or things that survived and overlooking those that didn’t, because of their lack of visibility.
Zero-sum bias
in negotiations is a bias, whereby a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another).
05 You project your negotiation mindset and assumptions onto the past and the future
Consistency bias
in negotiations is incorrectly remembering your past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour.
Pro-innovation bias
gives you an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.
Outcome bias
in business negotiations is the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
Hindsight bias
in business negotiations is the inclination to see past events as being more predictable, than they actually were.
Need for action in negotiations
01 To act in negotiations, you must be confident and know what is important
Effort justification
is when you value the efforts to achieve a negotiation outcome greater, than the objective value of the outcome.
Illusory superiority
in negotiations is overestimating your desirable qualities, and underestimating undesirable qualities, relative to other people.
Illusion of control
in negotiations is the tendency to overestimate your degree of influence over other external events.
Optimism bias
in business and contract negotiations is the tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable deals and results.
Overconfidence effect
in any negotiation is the excessive confidence in your own answers to (complex) questions.
02 To get things done, you want to complete things you have invested time and energy in
Endowment effect
in negotiations is the tendency for you to demand much more to give up an object than you would be willing to pay to acquire it.
Disposition effect
is the tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.
Zero-risk bias
is the preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.
Loss aversion
in negotiations refers to your tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it is better to not lose $5, than to find $5.
Sunk cost fallacy
is that you justify increased investment in a decision, based on your cumulative prior investment, despite evidence the decision was wrong.
What do you remember from your negotiations?
01 Motivated to preserve your status in a group, you avoid mistakes and irreversible decisions
Status quo bias
in business negotiations is the tendency you like things to stay relatively the same, so that you do not take action.
Social comparison bias
in negotiations is when making decisions, you favor potential candidates who don’t compete with your own particular strengths.
Decoy effect
is that you will tend to have a change in preference between two options, when presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated.
02 You favor simple options and complete information over complex negotiation options
Less-is-better effect
in negotiations is the tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly.
Law of triviality
in business and contract negotiations is the tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.
Belief bias
in negotiations is an effect where your evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.
Information bias
in business negotiations is a cognitive bias to seek additional information, when it does not affect action.
Ambiguity effect
in negotiations is that you have the tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.
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