The Impact of Social Value Orientations on Negotiator Cognition and Behavior

Prior research using experimental games has demonstrated that social value orientations affect the ways in which individuals approach and react to interdependent others; prosocials exhibit greater cooperation than individualists and competitors. This article extends these lines of research by examining the influence of social value orientations on negotiation cognition and behavior. Consistent with predictions, prosocials, relative to individualists and competitors, exhibited lower levels of demand, exhibited greater levels of concessions, and ascribed greater levels of fairness and considerateness to the other person. Moreover, prosocials as well as individualists and competitors exhibited tendencies toward logrolling, making greater concessions on low-priority rather than high-priority issues. The discussion describes several theoretical and practical implications of these findings.