The pernicious role of asymmetric history in negotiations

Linda Dezső, George Loewenstein, Jonathan Steinhart, Gabor Neszveda and Barnabás Szászi

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, vol. 116, issue C, 430-438

Abstract: The role of history in negotiations is a double-edged sword. Although parties can develop trust over time, there are also countless examples of protracted feuds that developed as a result of conflicting interpretations and invocations of history. We propose that, due to biased invocations of the past, history is likely to play a pernicious role in negotiations – particularly when given an asymmetric history in which one party benefited at the expense of the other. We test this prediction in two, two-stage experiments. We find that asymmetric history in a first stage leads to increased impasses in a second stage, but that this effect holds only when the second stage pairs the same two parties who shared the asymmetric history in the first.

Keywords: Negotiation; Bargaining impasse; Compensation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:116:y:2015:i:c:p:430-438

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.05.016

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