Article

Your Cost or My Benefit? : Effects of Concession Frames in Distributive Negotiations

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Abstract

Reaching agreement in distributive negotiations often requires making concessions, in which one side incurs a cost to provide a benefit to the other party. Although these two aspects, conceder-cost and receiver-benefit, coexist in any concession, past work has not disentangled the potentially differential effects of concessions framed as conceder-cost versus receiver-benefit on negotiation processes and outcomes. Across four studies, we find that receivers of concessions that emphasize the cost to the conceder obtain higher economic outcomes, but experience lower subjective outcomes, compared to receivers of concessions that emphasize benefit to the recipient. These effects are driven by receivers’ skepticism towards the conceder-cost frame and subsequent perceptions that conceders emphasizing cost are more manipulative. These negative perceptions, in turn lead them to make lower counteroffers compared to receivers of concessions that emphasize benefit, which ultimately benefit their economic outcomes.

Keywords: concession, cost, benefit, manipulativeness, economic outcome

How to Cite:

Bhatia, N. & Chow, R. & Weingart, L. & Diabes, M., (2023) “Your Cost or My Benefit? : Effects of Concession Frames in Distributive Negotiations”, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research 16(2), 165-188. doi: https://doi.org/10.34891/2023.489