NEGOTIATING PERSONALLY VERSUS NEGOTIATING AS AN AGENT: EFFECTS OF REDUCED MYOPIC PERCEPTION AND REVEALING DEADLINES

Abstract

Dissonant findings have resulted in a gap in literature on the effectiveness of representative negotiations. While some research find that employing an agent benefits the principal, contenders argue that agents are unnecessary and only complicate the straightforward mixed-motive context of negotiations. In two separate studies, I attempted to bridge this gap by directly comparing negotiating personally and negotiating as an agent in the context of deadlines. Firstly, using a 2x2 fully between- subjects design, I successfully manipulated myopic perception using an empirically supported debiasing technique. By measuring tendency to reveal deadlines, I tested if negotiating personally, as compared to as an agent, would result in more benefits from reduced myopic perception. In the second study, a 2x2 fully between-subjects experiment was conducted to test if negotiating personally, as compared to negotiating as an agent, would result in greater benefits in the form of higher final deal prices, from disclosing their deadlines. While I hypothesized that negotiating personally would be more beneficial than negotiating as an agent in both studies, results showed no significant difference between the two conditions, in terms of the benefits of overcoming myopic perception and the effectiveness of disclosed deadlines. Possible reasons for the nonsignificant results are discussed.