The agreement bias in negotiation teams facilitate impasse

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228214124 The Agreement Bias in Negotiation: Teams Facilitate Impasse Article in SSRN Electronic Journal · May 2010 DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.1612404 CITATION READS 1,336 3 authors, including: Taya R Cohen Geoffrey J Leonardelli 43 PUBLICATIONS 679 CITATIONS 43 PUBLICATIONS 1,000 CITATIONS Carnegie Mellon University SEE PROFILE University of Toronto SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Three Kinds of Self-Categorization View project Regulatory Focus and Feedback Responsiveness View project All content following this page was uploaded by Geoffrey J Leonardelli on 15 January 2017 The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file All in-text references underlined in blue are added to the original document and are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately The Agreement Bias in Negotiation: Teams Facilitate Impasse Taya R Cohen (Northwestern University) Geoffrey J Leonardelli (University of Toronto) Leigh L Thompson (Northwestern University) Paper Presented at the 23rd Annual International Association of Conflict Management Conference Boston, Massachusetts June 24 – 27, 2010 Abstract: This research represents the first empirical investigation of the agreement bias in negotiation The agreement bias is a negotiation trap characterized by settling for terms that are worse than one’s alternatives Results from two experiments indicated that teams reduce the agreement bias by facilitating impasse in negotiations with a negative bargaining zone Study found that the addition of a single teammate was sufficient for generating discontinuity between teams and solos in their ability to avoid the agreement bias Study provided support for two proposed explanations for the agreement bias Consistent with the faulty-judgment explanation, the role that required the most information processing benefited the most from the addition of a teammate Consistent with the concern-with-being-liked explanation, solos were perceived as exhibiting more agreeable behavior than teams, and agreeable behavior was associated with a greater likelihood of agreement AGREEMENT BIAS The Agreement Bias in Negotiation: Teams Facilitate Impasse Abstract This research represents the first empirical investigation of the agreement bias in negotiation The agreement bias is a negotiation trap characterized by settling for terms that are worse than one’s alternatives Results from two experiments indicated that teams reduce the agreement bias by facilitating impasse in negotiations with a negative bargaining zone Study found that the addition of a single teammate was sufficient for generating discontinuity between teams and solos in their ability to avoid the agreement bias Study provided support for two proposed explanations for the agreement bias Consistent with the faulty-judgment explanation, the role that required the most information processing benefited the most from the addition of a teammate Consistent with the concern-with-being-liked explanation, solos were perceived as exhibiting more agreeable behavior than teams, and agreeable behavior was associated with a greater likelihood of agreement Keywords: agreement bias; negotiation; impasse; teams; groups; interindividualintergroup discontinuity AGREEMENT BIAS The Agreement Bias in Negotiation: Teams Facilitate Impasse “The art of leadership is not saying Yes, it’s saying No.” Tony Blair (cited in Ury, 2007, p 4) Effective negotiation requires understanding not only how to “get to yes” but also how and when to say no However, since the publication of Fisher and Ury’s (1981) seminal negotiation book, Getting to Yes, negotiation research has focused almost exclusively on helping people reach agreements, whereas little, if any, research has investigated factors that help parties reach impasses when a negative bargaining zone exists (i.e., when there is no zone of possible agreement) When negotiation impasses are discussed, they are usually framed as problems (e.g., O'Connor & Arnold, 2001) that can potentially be solved by correcting biases (e.g., Babcock & Loewenstein, 1997) or bargaining more rationally (e.g., Roth, 1995) However, it is not always desirable or advantageous to reach a deal in negotiation If a negotiator has better alternatives elsewhere then it would be foolish for him or her to ignore those attractive alternatives in favor of a less desirable settlement The failure to impasse when there is a negative bargaining zone is called the agreement bias (Thompson, 2009) The agreement bias is a negotiation trap characterized by settling for terms that are worse than one’s alternatives Although negotiation textbooks (e.g., Thompson, 2009) typically discuss the pitfalls of the agreement bias or “getting to yes trap,” a social science literature search yielded no empirical articles that have investigated this bias in bargaining or negotiation Although no research has investigated the agreement bias directly, research on team versus solo negotiation has implications for understanding why the agreement bias occurs We AGREEMENT BIAS review this research and then present two experiments testing whether negotiating teams are less likely than solos to fall prey to the agreement bias The Agreement Bias and the Concern with Being Liked William Ury’s latest negotiation book, The Power of a Positive No, declares that “No is today’s biggest challenge” (Ury, 2007, p 10) Saying no is challenging because people fear that doing so will hurt their relationship with the other party Indeed, the desire for social approval is one of the strongest motivations guiding human behavior (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) Influence based on the desire for social approval is known as normative social influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955)—or, “the concern with being liked” (Insko, Drenan, Solomon, Smith, & Wade, 1983; Insko, Smith, Alicke, Wade, & Taylor, 1985) Normative social influence can be contrasted with informational social influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955), which derives from a different set of psychological motivations that center upon a person’s desire to be accurate—or their “concern with being right” (Insko, et al., 1983; Insko, et al., 1985) Insko et al (1983, 1985) provided evidence of both the concern with being liked and the concern with being right in examinations on conformity using a variation of the Asch line-judging paradigm (Asch, 1956) Participants were more likely to conform to incorrect decisions made by the group when individual decisions were made publically rather than privately (concern with being liked) and when correct answers would ostensibly be provided by a computer after participants’ decisions were recorded (concern with being right) In negotiation contexts in which a negative bargaining zone exists, mutual agreement is not viable because parties’ interests cannot simultaneously be met For example, a negative bargaining zone exists when the very most a buyer is willing to pay is less than the very least a seller can accept Similarly, a negative bargaining zone exists if a buyer’s proposed use of an AGREEMENT BIAS object or service is deemed to be inappropriate by the seller This is often referred to as acting in a way consistent with one’s principles (even if it means turning down money) Indeed, a compendium of research studies on the ultimatum game reveal that people turn down financially lucrative offers because their principles of fairness have been offended (e.g., Pillutla & Murnighan, 1996) In cases in which a negative bargaining zone exists, the negotiator’s concern with being right and concern with being liked are in opposition The concern with being right requires an impasse because impasse is the correct decision when there is a negative bargaining zone However, the concern with being liked requires reaching an agreement because impasses are socially awkward and even detrimental to negotiators’ relationships (O'Connor & Arnold, 2001) The common expressions, “failure to reach agreement” and “failed to come to terms,” smack of personal and social shortcomings Indeed, Howard, Gardner, and Thompson (2007) found that solo negotiators who held interdependent self-construals, which presumably activated the concern with being liked, were more likely to reach an agreement and were more generous in their negotiated settlements than negotiators who held independent self-construals These results were in the context of a dispute negotiation containing a positive bargaining zone, thus making it wise and logical to reach agreements Howard et al.’s (2007) findings suggest that the concern with being liked prompts negotiators to reach deals and also be generous toward opponents However, the concern with being liked affects team negotiators quite differently Members of negotiating teams need not concern themselves with being liked by the opposing party because they can satisfy their concern with being liked within their own team In support of this reasoning, Howard et al (2007) found that interdependently-primed teams were less likely to reach an agreement and less generous in AGREEMENT BIAS their settlements than were independently-primed teams Whereas the concern with being liked prompted solo negotiators to reach deals and be generous toward counter-parties, it prompted team negotiators to impasse and be selfish Solo negotiators, then, may be more susceptible to the agreement bias than team negotiators because for solo negotiators the concern with being liked is inconsistent with declaring an impasse Whereas we propose that the concern with being liked may help teams avoid the agreement bias, it may in other circumstances be a liability for teams by leading them to be overly competitive and reject potentially lucrative deals Indeed, the interdependently-primed negotiating teams in Howard et al.’s (2007) study were more likely to impasse even though the bargaining zone was positive Likewise, Wildschut, Insko, and Gaertner (2002) found that the concern with being liked exacerbated teams’ competitive tendencies in an intergroup prisoner’s dilemma game Team members who made decisions publically were more competitive toward an opposing team than were team members who made decisions privately (Wildschut et al., 2002) Because mutual competition results in suboptimal outcomes in prisoner’s dilemma interactions, the concern with being liked led teams to be worse off financially than had they chosen mutual cooperation At the societal level, the concern with being liked by fellow group members can have devastating consequences For example, ingroup loyalty is associated with more external warfare and greater enjoyment of violence against outgroups (T R Cohen, Montoya, & Insko, 2006) In summary, one reason that negotiators fall prey to the agreement bias is because they feel pressure to be liked (or not held in disregard) by the counterparty Team negotiators are less likely to feel this pressure because they can satisfy their need for social approval via their teammates Moreover, team members might even gain greater social approval by acting tough AGREEMENT BIAS and intransigent (T R Cohen et al., 2006; Wildschut et al., 2002) Indeed, members of teams who display resolve and adopt extreme views are held in higher regard by their constituencies who hold similar views (Abrams, Marques, Bown, & Henson, 2000) Although the concern with being liked can, in some circumstances, lead teams to reject viable deals, it is also likely to help them avoid the agreement bias The Agreement Bias and Faulty Judgment A large body of research suggests that negotiators are susceptible to biased judgment (e.g., Neale & Bazerman, 1994; Thompson & Hastie, 1990; Thompson & Hrebec, 1996) For example, most negotiators fall prey to the fixed-pie perception, or the faulty belief that their interests are diametrically opposed to those of the other party (Thompson & Hastie, 1990) The agreement bias can be regarded as a judgmental bias Once engaged in a negotiation, negotiators often fail to fully consider their alternatives outside the negotiation That is, they lose sight of their Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA; Fisher & Ury, 1981) The business concept of BATNA was derived by Fisher and Ury (1981) from Kelley and Thibaut’s (1978) construct of Comparison Level for Alternatives (CLalt) Just as Kelley and Thibaut (1978) proposed that an individual’s CLalt is an important source of power in interpersonal relationships, Fisher and Ury (1981) proposed that an individual’s BATNA is an important source of power in negotiation If a proposed deal does not meet or exceed a negotiator’s BATNA, then no deal should be reached A key to success in negotiation is identifying each party’s BATNA, as well as their underlying interests (Fisher & Ury, 1981; Thompson, 2009; Thompson, Wang, & Gunia, 2010) Negotiators who fail to accurately identify their own interests and BATNA are vulnerable to the agreement bias because they may settle for outcomes that fail to meet their minimally-acceptable AGREEMENT BIAS terms Thus, the agreement bias, like other judgmental biases, may be regarded an example of faulty information processing or failure to adhere to what objective observers would deem to be a wise course of action A strong BATNA can help a negotiator obtain better outcomes in negotiation (Fisher & Ury, 1981) Another way to increase one’s likelihood of success in negotiation is by negotiating as a team A consistent finding in research on problem solving is that teams are better than individuals at solving complex problems (Hill, 1982; Laughlin, Bonner, & Miner, 2002; Laughlin, Hatch, Silver, & Boh, 2006) With regard to effectiveness and performance at the negotiation table, teams have an advantage over solo negotiators in multi-issue negotiations with integrative potential (Morgan & Tindale, 2002; Thompson, Peterson, & Brodt, 1996), and this is especially true among trained rather than novice negotiators (Polzer, 1996) By advantage, we mean that teams are more likely than solo negotiators at crafting agreements that are economically more attractive for both parties One reason teams have an advantage in negotiation is because they have greater information processing capacity that helps them achieve integrative agreements that create value (Thompson, et al., 1996) For example, teams are more likely than solos to ask questions about their counterpart’s preferences and priorities and provide information to their counterpart about their own preferences and priorities (Thompson et al., 1996) These strategies, along with teams’ greater judgment accuracy, lead teams to outperform solos in identifying compatible issues and making mutually beneficial tradeoffs (i.e., logrolling) The greater information processing capacity of teams may also help them avoid the agreement bias In summary, a second reason that negotiators fall prey to the agreement bias is because of faulty judgment Negotiators who fail to accurately identify their alternatives and underlying AGREEMENT BIAS interests are vulnerable to accepting proposals that are worse than their BATNA Teams allow for greater information processing, and this greater information processing is likely to make negotiating teams better equipped than solos to avoid the agreement bias Investigating the Agreement Bias in Negotiation The explanations that we have discussed thus far both suggest that teams should have an advantage relative to solos in avoiding the agreement bias To test this prediction, we conducted two experiments in which we compared teams and solos in a context in which reaching agreement was unwise because there was a negative bargaining zone on interests Because of the negative bargaining zone on interests, the correct solution was impasse—no agreement should have been reached Thus, negotiators who reached deals in these experiments were victims of the agreement bias Study Study compared solo and team negotiators’ likelihood of succumbing to the agreement bias We investigated both two-person and three-person teams The purpose of examining team size was to test whether the addition of a single teammate reduces the agreement bias or whether a larger team is necessary There is a discontinuity between one-on-one and group-on-group interactions in the prisoner’s dilemma game, and two-person teams are sufficient for generating this discontinuity (e.g., McCallum et al., 1985; McGlynn, Harding, & Cottle, 2009; Wildschut, Pinter, Vevea, Insko, & Schopler, 2003) In addition, teams outperform solos in multi-issue negotiations, and two-person teams are sufficient for producing this change (e.g., Morgan & Tindale, 2002; Thompson, et al., 1996) Thus, we hypothesized that both two- and three-person teams would impasse more than solo negotiators but we did not expect a difference due to team size (H1) AGREEMENT BIAS 10 anonymity and not reveal the intended use of the site under any circumstances Thus, there was a negative bargaining zone on interests, so if both parties stayed true to their interests, no agreement should have been reached There was a positive bargaining zone on finances, but this issue was of a secondary concern to both parties After negotiating, participants reported whether they reached a deal Our key outcome variable was whether the parties reached an agreement (0) or an impasse (1) Results Impasse rates were submitted to a logistic regression with team size as a three-level categorical predictor This analysis yielded a significant effect of team size, Wald χ2(2, N = 319) = 12.59, p = 002) As shown in Figure 1, impasse rates were lower in the solo condition (30%) than in the dyad (56%) or triad conditions (47%) In support of H1, orthogonal contrasts revealed that (c1) solos were significantly less likely to impasse than teams (b = -0.90, SE = 25, p < 001, odds ratio = 41), and (c2) two-person and three-person teams were not significantly different from each other (b = 33, SE = 41, p = 42, odds ratio = 1.39) Discussion These results support the conclusion that teams reduce the prevalence of the agreement bias in negotiation Teams were significantly more likely than solos to impasse—the correct solution in the negotiation because of the negative bargaining zone on interests This was true regardless of whether the team was composed of two or three members These findings suggest that the difference between teams and solos is due to the presence of teams rather than a function of team size A limitation of Study was that we did not explore the concern-with-being-liked explanation for the agreement bias, nor did we fully explore the faulty-judgment explanation AGREEMENT BIAS 11 Study did allow for a weak test of the faulty-judgment explanation because the case materials and information load was held constant across teams, meaning that there may have been relatively less cognitive work necessary in three-person teams relative to two-person teams However, coordinating negotiating strategies among three team members may be more difficult than coordinating negotiating strategies among two team members, so it is also possible that the addition of a third team member maybe have created more cognitive work rather than less Statistically, we did not find a difference between two- and three-person teams, so it remains unclear whether the faulty-judgment explanation has merit In Study 2, we sought to replicate and extend the findings of Study by varying the size of seller and buyer teams separately The seller’s role involves greater information processing than the buyer’s role, so examining the team effect separately for buyers and sellers allowed us to directly test the faulty-judgment explanation for the agreement bias In addition, a postnegotiation questionnaire was included in Study 2, which allowed us to test the concern-withbeing-liked explanation The questionnaire asked participants to rate the other party’s behavior in terms of agreeableness-disagreeableness We reasoned that teams would act in a less agreeable (more disagreeable) manner than solos because they would be less concerned with being liked by their counterpart, and therefore their behavior would be congruent with the underlying structure of the situation (i.e., they would focus more on satisfying their concern with being right) To test the concern-with-being-liked explanation, we examined whether ratings of disagreeable behavior were associated with a greater likelihood of impasse Study In Study 2, we tested whether the reduction of the agreement bias is attributable to the size of the seller team, buyer team, or an intergroup context in which both parties are teams AGREEMENT BIAS 12 Investigating the size of the buyer and seller teams separately allowed us to examine how information processing contributes to the agreement bias In the Bullard Houses exercise (Karp et al., 2008), the seller’s role involves greater information processing than the buyer’s role Whereas the buyer can focus almost exclusively on the sale price of the property, the seller must focus on a multitude of issues Specifically, the seller must gather information about the buyer’s identity and intended use of the property (which the buyer is unwilling to share), consider the financial aspects of the buyer’s offer, and determine whether the members of the Bullard family would find the buyer’s offer favorable (this latter aspect is particularly difficult because the members of the Bullard family have disparate preferences) In light of the greater information processing required by the seller role, we hypothesized that a seller team would be pivotal for avoiding the agreement bias because it is the seller that ultimately must decide to exit the negotiation (H1) Study included a post-negotiation questionnaire that allowed us to test the concernwith-being-liked explanation for the agreement bias We hypothesized that participants would exhibit more disagreeable behavior in negotiations involving teams than in one-on-one negotiations (H2) Prior research indicates that intergroup interactions are more competitive than one-on-group or group-on-one interactions (Wildschut, Insko, & Pinter, 2007), so we also hypothesized that team-on-team negotiations would be characterized by more disagreeable behavior than negotiations involving only one team (H3) We did not expect differences in disagreeable behavior between buyer-teams and seller-teams Finally, we hypothesized that disagreeable behavior would be associated with a greater likelihood of impasse (H4) AGREEMENT BIAS 13 Method A total of 218 MBA students from Northwestern University completed the Bullard Houses negotiation (Karp, et al., 2008) As in Study 1, one week prior to negotiating, students were randomly assigned to a seller role or a buyer role Each student was randomly assigned negotiate as a solo or as a two-person team Because Study revealed no significant difference between two-member and three-member teams, all teams in Study contained two members The unit of analysis was the negotiation (N = 73 negotiations) Immediately following the negotiation, all participants completed a post-negotiation questionnaire in which they rated their counterpart’s behavior with five semantic differentials: pleasant-unpleasant; friendly-unfriendly; cooperative-uncooperative; competitivenoncompetitive (reversed); quarrelsome-harmonious (reversed) The items ranged from to 5, with higher scores indicating more disagreeable behavior Because the unit of analysis was the negotiation (not the individual participant), we averaged the ratings from all the participants in the negotiation to form a composite index of perceived disagreeable behavior (α = 84) We tested H1 with a (buyer size: solo vs team) X (seller size: solo vs team) logistic regression (teams coded -.5; solos coded 5) We expected a significant effect of seller size such that the presence of a seller team would increase the likelihood of impasse We tested H2 and H3 with a linear regression analysis that included three planned orthogonal contrasts (J Cohen et al., 2003) These contrasts were: (c1) solo-buyer/solo-seller coded 75, team-buyer/solo-seller coded -.25, solo-buyer/team-seller coded -.25, teambuyer/team-seller coded -.25; (c2) solo-buyer/solo-seller coded 0, team-buyer/solo-seller coded 33, solo-buyer/team-seller coded -.33, team-buyer/team-seller coded 67; (c3) solo-buyer/soloseller coded 0; team-buyer/solo-seller coded -.5; solo-buyer/team-seller coded 5; team- AGREEMENT BIAS 14 buyer/team-seller coded 0) We expected a significant effect for c1 such that there would be more disagreeable behavior when there was at least one team in the negotiation than when there were no teams We expected a significant effect for c2 such that there would be more disagreeable behavior in team-on-team negotiations than when only one party was a team We did not expect a significant effect for c3 because we presumed seller-teams and buyer-teams would exhibit similar levels of disagreeable behavior Finally, we tested H4 by regressing impasse rates on disagreeable behavior in a logistic regression analysis We expected disagreeable behavior to be associated with a greater likelihood of impasse Results As shown in Figure 2, impasse rates were highest in the team-buyer/team-seller condition (61%), followed by the solo-buyer/team-seller condition (41%), the team-buyer/solo-seller condition (16%), and the solo-buyer/solo-seller condition (11%) In support of H1, a logistic regression of impasse rates revealed a significant effect of seller size (b = 1.96, SE = 60, p = 001, odds ratio = 14) Negotiations in which the seller was a team were over times as likely to result in impasse as negotiations in which the seller was a solo Buyer size (b = -.64, SE = 60, p = 29, odds ratio = 53), and Seller Size X Buyer Size (b = 34, SE = 1.20, p = 78, odds ratio = 1.41) were nonsignificant As shown in Figure 3, disagreeable behavior was highest in the team-buyer/team-seller condition (M = 2.82, SD = 51), followed by the solo-buyer/team-seller condition (M = 2.57, SD = 58), the team-buyer/solo-seller condition (M = 2.47, SD = 50), and the solo-buyer/solo-seller condition (M = 2.08, SD = 51) In support of H2 and H3, a linear regression of disagreeable behavior that included the three planned orthogonal contrasts revealed significant effects for c1 AGREEMENT BIAS 15 (b = -.54, SE = 14, p < 001) and c2 (b = 30, SE = 15, p = 05), but not c3 (b = 10, SE = 18, p = 57) The significance of c1 indicates that there was more disagreeable behavior in negotiations involving teams than in one-on-one negotiations The significance of c2 indicates that there was more disagreeable behavior in team-on-team negotiations than in negotiations involving only one team The nonsignificance of c3 suggests that seller-teams and buyer-teams exhibited similar levels of disagreeable behavior We tested H4 by regressing impasses on disagreeable behavior with a logistic regression As predicted, disagreeable behavior was associated with a significantly greater likelihood of reaching an impasse (b = 1.45 SE = 52, p = 005, odds ratio = 4.26) Discussion In support of the faulty-judgment explanation for the agreement bias, we found that a seller team was critical for increasing the likelihood of impasse Negotiations in which the seller was a team were over times as likely to result in impasse as negotiations in which the seller was a solo The presence of a buyer team was much less important—negotiations in which the buyer was a team were just as likely to result in agreement as negotiations between two solos Although there was a descriptive trend for team-on-team negotiations to be somewhat more likely to result in impasse than negotiations in which only the seller was a team (61% vs 41% impasse), the interaction between buyer size and seller size was nonsignificant, so we caution against generalizing this finding In support of the concern-with-being-liked explanation for the agreement bias, the postnegotiation ratings indicated that team negotiations were characterized by significantly more disagreeable behavior than negotiations not involving teams, and disagreeable behavior was associated with a greater likelihood of impasse Although the presence of a single team in the AGREEMENT BIAS 16 negotiation served to increase disagreeable behavior, the intergroup context made disagreeable behavior particularly likely—team-on-team negotiations were characterized by significantly more competitive and unpleasant behavior than negotiations involving only a single team This finding is consistent with research on group-individual discontinuity in competition, which finds that intergroup competition is higher in group-on-group interactions than in group-on-one or oneon-group interactions (Wildschut et al., 2007) General Discussion This research represents the first empirical investigation of the agreement bias in negotiation Results from two experiments indicated that teams facilitate impasse in negotiations with a negative bargaining zone These findings extend prior research on team negotiation by showing that teams are not only better than solos at creating and claiming value in multi-issue negotiations with positive bargaining zones (Morgan & Tindale, 2002; Polzer, 1996; Thompson, et al., 1996), they are also better at avoiding the getting-to-yes trap Study found that the addition of a single teammate was sufficient for generating discontinuity between teams and solos in their ability to avoid the agreement bias Study extended these findings by providing evidence consistent with both the faulty-judgment and concern-with-being-liked explanations Consistent with the faulty-judgment explanation, the role that required the most information processing benefited the most from the addition of a teammate This finding suggests that the greater information processing capability of teams makes them better equipped than solos to avoid the agreement bias Consistent with the concernwith-being-liked explanation, solos were perceived as exhibiting more agreeable behavior than teams, and agreeable behavior was associated with a greater likelihood of agreement Because team members could satisfy their need for social approval within their team, they had no need to AGREEMENT BIAS 17 act overly pleasant or cooperative toward their counterpart Thus, teams were more free than solos to focus on achieving the correct solution in the negotiation Opportunities for Future Research Our findings suggest that concern with being liked and faulty judgment are two factors underlying the agreement bias A third potential factor underlying the agreement bias is that negotiators want to be seen as “deal-makers” not “deal-breakers.” In other words, negotiators have a deal-maker identity and failing to reach a deal is a threat to their sense of self-efficacy (cf O'Connor & Arnold, 2001) Although we did not explore this explanation in the current research, future studies should examine how negotiators’ sense of self-efficacy and identity as deal-makers influence their susceptibility to the agreement bias Implications Negotiation research has benefitted greatly by adopting the economic yardstick of pareto optimality as its prime dependent measure Stated simply, most scholars are preoccupied with discovering the cognitive and social conditions that best position negotiators to reach optimal agreements The wisdom of avoiding bad agreements has not been on the scholarly radar screen Thus, the present research begins upstream of where negotiation research often starts The wisdom of reaching a deal must logically precede the analysis of which mutual agreements might be more optimal than others In this sense, our research agenda is 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