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Is there a place for sympathy in negotiation? Finding strength in weakness

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  • Shirako, Aiwa
  • Kilduff, Gavin J.
  • Kray, Laura J.

Abstract

Across five studies, we investigate the use of appeals to the moral emotion of sympathy in negotiations. We find that negotiators who actively appeal to the sympathy of their counterparts achieve improved outcomes, both in terms of distributive value claiming as well as integrative value creation. We also compare the effects of sympathy appeals to appeals based on rationality and fairness, and find that sympathy appeals are generally the most effective. These results, then, suggest that negotiators with certain sources of weakness may actually benefit from revealing their weakness, if doing so elicits sympathy in their counterparts. We also explore negotiator power as a possible boundary condition to sympathy appeals. Relative to low power negotiators, we find that high power negotiators’ sympathy appeals are seen as more inappropriate and manipulative, and may damage the negotiators’ relationship going forward.

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  • Shirako, Aiwa & Kilduff, Gavin J. & Kray, Laura J., 2015. "Is there a place for sympathy in negotiation? Finding strength in weakness," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 95-109.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:131:y:2015:i:c:p:95-109
    DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.09.004
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kray, Laura J. & Kennedy, Jessica A. & Van Zant, Alex B., 2014. "Not competent enough to know the difference? Gender stereotypes about women’s ease of being misled predict negotiator deception," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 61-72.
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    10. Brooks, Alison Wood & Schweitzer, Maurice E., 2011. "Can Nervous Nelly negotiate? How anxiety causes negotiators to make low first offers, exit early, and earn less profit," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 43-54, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Hart, Einav & Schweitzer, Maurice E., 2020. "Getting to less: When negotiating harms post-agreement performance," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 155-175.
    2. Yossi Maaravi & Orly Idan & Guy Hochman, 2019. "And sympathy is what we need my friend—Polite requests improve negotiation results," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-22, March.

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