Effect of politeness strategies in dialogue on negotiation outcomes

Abstract

Negotiation is a social interaction aimed at reaching a mutually beneficial agreement among all participants in a conflict situation. Unfortunately, parties often find negotiations threatening or aversive, undermining the chances of reaching good agreements. Politeness strategies are means of communicating one's demands to a counterpart without threatening the counterpart's "face" by using tactical phrasing. Politeness strategies are classified into positive, negative, and off-record strategies depending on how they avoid face-threatening acts. In the present study, we investigated whether differences in the politeness strategies used by a virtual agent impact negotiated outcomes in a non-zero-sum situation. The participants (n=106) engaged in an online multi-issue negotiation with one of three agents (using the positive, off-record, or no politeness strategies, while the negative strategy was excluded because of validation failure). The results showed that the agents who used the off-record strategy were able to extract greater concessions from their human partners, whereas positive politeness, which does not threaten the other's face, led to fairer negotiated agreements. The human participants were comfortable exploiting agents who failed to adopt any politeness in their language. Politeness is a part of the toolbox that people use to manage the social rewards and punishments associated with all interactions, and our work highlights that agents can use this important social tool.