On a more serious note, we mention this academic definition of
negotiations:
Roloff, M.E., & Jordan, J.M. (1992). Achieving negotiation
goals: the “fruits and foibles” of planning ahead. In L.L. Putnam
and M.E. Roloff (eds) Communication and Negotiation. Newbury
Park: Sage, pp. 21-45.
A popular book on the subject is
Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2012). Getting to Yes:
Negotiating an agreement without giving in. 3rd ed. London Random
House.
If you would like to see a nice collection of metaphors in
different types in negotiation, have a look at
Smith, T. H. (2005). Metaphors for navigating negotiations.
Negotiation Journal, 21(3), 343-364. [See what the author did
there?]
Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2019). Social actors ‘to go’: An
analytical toolkit to explore agency in business discourse and
communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly,
82(2), 214-238.
Erika also mentions a study that shows just how important
language use, including use of pronouns, is in negotiations:
Neu, J., & Graham, J. L. (1995). An analysis of language use
in negotiations: The role of context and content. In K. Ehlich and
J. Wagner (eds) The Discourse of Business Negotiation. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 243-272.
We conduct the first of two interviews for this episode with
Judith Large, a professional negotiator and academic. Her
experience of post-war Sri Lanka is captured in
Large, J. (2016). Pushback: Sri Lanka’s dance with global
governance. London: Zed Books.
Between interviews, we talk about different strategies used by
negotiators to manipulate others into agreement, not necessarily
for our listeners to apply them but to become aware of them and,
where appropriate, counter them. We discuss “salami slicing”,
“lowballing” and “disrupt and reframe”; for the last one, see
Davis, B. P., & E.S. Knowles (1999). A disrupt-then-reframe
technique of social influence. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 76(2), 192-199.
Other than that, the following two strategies are often
mentioned:
Foot in the Door: The negotiator starts with a small request
before gradually increasing their demands. Doing so increases the
likelihood that a respondent will agree to the later request. This
strategy is based on the principle of compliance:
Freedman, J.L., & S.C. Fraser (1966). Compliance without
pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195-202.
The authors found that if an initial request to put up a small
signpost outside one’s home (‘Drive safely’) was followed by the
request to put up a much larger sign, 55% of respondents would
comply, compared with 20% compliance if asked for the larger sign
straightaway.
Door in the Face: The negotiator makes a large request that
the respondent will most likely turn down. This request is followed
by a second, more reasonable request. Studies show that the second
request is more frequently complied with than if that same, smaller
request is made in isolation:
Cialdini, R.B., Vincent, J.E., Lewis, S.K., Catalan, J.,
Wheeler, D., & B.L. Darby (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure
for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-face technique. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 31(2), 206-215.
The authors’ example is a request to be a regular blood donor
vs the request to donate blood only once. When exposed to both
requests, 50% of subjects complied with the second request while a
mere 32% complied when they were only presented with the second,
smaller request.
Parents and carers may be interested in this application of
the two techniques described above:
Chan, A.C., & T.K. Au (2011). Getting children to do more
academic work: Foot-in-the-door versus door-in-the-face. Teaching
and Teacher Education, 27(6), 982-985
[Spoiler: Door-in-the-face works best.]
Across studies though, both are equally effective:
Pascual, A., & N. Guéguen, N. (2005). Foot-in-the-door and
door-in-the-face: A comparative meta-analytic study. Psychological
Reports, 96(1), 122-128.
Our own meta-analysis is based on a clip of us preparing this
episode and having a negotiation ourselves. You can hear us reach
agreement here:
https://youtu.be/m7Lci3jCiyM By analysing our own talk during
preparation, we take our listeners to the backstage of Words &
Actions. You can watch a bite-sized introduction to sociologist
Erving Goffman’s notion of frontstage and backstage communication
here (narrated by Stephen Fry, no less!):
https://youtu.be/6Z0XS-QLDWM
Finally, at two points in the episode we mention zero-sum
thinking, a notion from psychology that is often applied in
economics and consumer behaviour research. A recent article
is
Another topic that kept popping up throughout was translation
and multilingualism. We will address it in our next episode – see
you for that!