emotions in negotiation

What are Emotions in Negotiation?

Emotions in negotiation are always present and often affect your experience. You may try to ignore them, but they will not ignore you.

You may be only marginally aware of the important ways that emotions in negotiation influence your thinking and your behavior. But understanding your own negotiation psychology and emotions, as well as those of the other party, can help you meet substantive interests in negotiations and build relationships with counterparts. Emotions can also have a negative impact on outcomes.

For example, feeling anxious and stressed impairs our negotiating ability. Feeling sad, as compared to being in a neutral mood, disposes us to sell our possessions for lower prices and purchase items for higher prices. 

Then there’s anger. Anger is one of the emotions in negotiation that may have both positive and negative consequences. People demand less from angry negotiators and grant them more concessions. However, although people may back down when their counterparts get angry, they seize on opportunities to retaliate against them later, Lu Wang of the University of South Wales and her colleagues found in their research. People also are more likely to lie to angry counterparts than to happy ones. 

One word of caution, however, is that faking emotions in negotiation that you don’t feel often backfires, research shows.

Learn how to negotiate like a diplomat, think on your feet like an improv performer, and master job offer negotiation like a professional athlete when you download a copy of our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

We will send you a download link to your copy of the report and notify you by email when we post new business negotiation advice and information on how to build a winning team to our website.

The following items are tagged emotions in negotiation: