When Vigilance Prevails: Regulatory Focus in Negotiations with External Goals

Abstract

Negotiators often bargain on behalf of others. In many cases, these constituents set the goals they want their negotiators to achieve at the table. We argue that prior evidence for superior results of promotion-focused negotiators may not hold when goals are set by others. We report the results of a study in which negotiators were provided with external goals that were difficult to achieve in the given zone of agreement. We found that prevention-focused individuals planned better, and their dyads persisted longer in the negotiation than those with a promotion focus. Persistence led to higher joint outcomes for prevention-focused dyads than promotion-focused dyads. In addition, we found that agreeableness only affected individual financial outcomes for promotion-focused dyads, where high agreeableness led to poorer outcomes.