Study 4: Distributive Negotiations
In Study 4 we examine the effect of shaking hands on a different—and often more antagonistic—type of negotiation: a single-issue distributive negotiation. We predicted that cooperative motives would lead to a smaller point discrepancy within the zone of possible agreement (ZOPA), such that outcomes would be more equitable. Distributive negotiations are not affected by openness because each side’s preferences are known to be in opposition; instead, many distributive negotiations involve asymmetric information, which negotiators can choose to disclose, hide—or lie about. We focus in particular on lies that distort the counterpart’s perception of the ZOPA. We predicted that handshakes would reduce the number of lies told, which would reduce point discrepancy between negotiators. We explore these predictions with two classes of executives completing the same distributive negotiation for a negotiation class.
Method
Participants . One hundred seventy executives (133 males) who attended a negotiation course in the Executive Education Program at a top business school in the Northeastern United States completed a distributive negotiation.
Procedure . Participants negotiated a sale of real estate property. We randomly assigned participants to the role of “Seller” or “Buyer” in the negotiation. We instructed half of the pairs to shake hands before starting negotiations using similar instructions as in Study 3: “It is common for negotiators to shake hands prior to engaging in discussions at the bargaining table.
Please shake your counterpart’s hand prior to starting the negotiation.” The other half did not receive any further instructions: “Please start the negotiation.” After the negotiation, the Buyers completed a survey.
Materials . In the Hamilton Real Estate negotiation (Malhotra, 2010), a Seller offers a property for sale to a Buyer. The ZOPA ranges from $41.8 million to $60 million (i.e., from the Seller’s reservation value to the Buyer’s reservation value). This negotiation contains a key information asymmetry, with important consequences for the ZOPA. The Buyer knows that zoning laws will soon change, allowing him to develop the land as commercial (rather than residential) property, making it considerably more valuable; the Seller believes that zoning laws restricting development to residential property are unlikely to change. In short, the Buyer benefits from the Seller not knowing this information—such that lying about this information is tempting. The only issue the executives were asked to agree upon was the price for the property, because Buyers (not Sellers) have the additional information that makes it tempting for them to lie and thus obtain a larger share of the ZOPA, we only surveyed the Buyers. Buyers first reported whether they had reached an agreement in the negotiation and, if so, the price at which they agreed to purchase the property from the Seller. In addition, they answered two questions assessing the extent to which they were intentionally misleading during the negotiation (1 = I was truthful; 7 = I was intentionally misleading): When discussing the issues of this negotiation with the Seller, in general, how intentionally misleading were you (e.g., lying about what was important to you or about information you had that you did not want to disclose)?; When discussing how you intended to use the property if you acquired it from the Seller, how intentionally misleading were you? We averaged these two items into a composite measure of lying (α = .71).
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Results
We first computed the Buyer’s profit based on the $18.2 million ZOPA range from $41.8 to $60 million. The percentage of the overall ZOPA that the Buyer captured was our main dependent variable. For instance, if a dyad reached a final agreement of $45M, the Buyer’s profit would be $15M ($60M–$45M), or 82% of the ZOPA captured ($15M/$18.2M). As predicted, when pairs shook hands, the percentage of the ZOPA captured by Buyers was closer to the equal split (i.e., 50%) than when they did not shake hands (handshake vs. no handshake: M = 56.6%, SD = 16.5% vs. M = 78.4%, SD = 25.3%), t(83) = 4.73, p < .01, d = 1.04.
In addition, Buyers who shook hands reported being less misleading than Buyers who did not (handshake vs. no handshake: M = 3.29, SD = 1.53 vs. M = 4.19, SD = 1.37), t(83) = -2.85, p = .01, d = -0.63. The effect of shaking hands on the percentage of the ZOPA captured was reduced (from β = -.46, p < .01 to β = -.41, p < .01) when self-reported lying was included in the equation, and lying marginally predicted how much value they captured in the negotiation (β = .17, p = .09). A bootstrap analysis showed that the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval excluded zero [0.61, 4.01], suggesting a significant indirect effect.
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Discussion
In contrast to the effect of a handshake in an integrative negotiation, which increased joint outcomes and open priority exchange, a handshake in a distributive negotiation instead made outcomes more equitable and reduced lying behavior. Executives who shook hands before negotiating were less likely to lie to their counterparts and divided the available "pie" more evenly. Lying behavior partially, but not fully, mediated the relationship between shaking hands and point outcomes. We note that we could only collect self-reported lying in this study, which may not perfectly reflect actual lying behavior in the negotiations. A more objective measure of lying from videotapes of the negotiations (which we were unable to obtain for the current study) may have revealed a stronger effect of lies on point outcomes.
General Discussion
Children in conflict are often told by parents to “shake hands and make up,” suggesting a belief in the cooperation-inducing properties of this simple gesture. Indeed, we show that adults also believe that handshakes signal cooperation—and further feel comfortable doing them in the adversarial context of a negotiation, making handshakes particularly relevant for negotiation outcomes. In both integrative and distributive negotiations, using executives, MBA students, and undergraduates, we show that shaking hands increases cooperative behavior, decreases antagonistic behavior, and produces systematically different negotiation outcomes. In integrative negotiations, shaking hands increased parties’ willingness to openly discuss their priorities and make favorable exchanges on trade-off issues, leading to improved joint outcomes. The effect of handshakes on outcomes was fully mediated by open priority exchange. In a distributive negotiation with asymmetric information, shaking hands reduced lying and resulted in more equitable agreements. Decreased lying partially mediated the relationship between handshakes and percentage of ZOPA obtained. Taken together, these results suggest that the simple act of shaking hands is a powerful gesture that alters negotiation outcomes.
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Theoretical Implications
Our work contributes to the literature in several ways. First, our data inform research on social motives. Prior research has found that individuals behave cooperatively in negotiations (and social dilemmas more generally) when they have cooperative goals and expect their counterpart to have cooperative goals too (e.g., Steinel & DeDreu, 2004). Our results build on these findings by showing that people shake hands before negotiations as a signal of their willingness to cooperate. Based on our results, we can conclude that compared to negotiators who do not shake hands, those who do so are more open in the way they share information and are less likely to lie.
Second, our work contributes to research on the importance of building rapport in negotiation and conflicts more generally (Drolet & Morris, 1999; Maddux, Mullen, & Galinsky, 2008; Moore, Kurtzberg, Thompson, & Morris, 1999). For instance, Drolet and Morris (1999) found that rapport enables coordination on solutions to mixed-motive conflicts and leads to integrative outcomes. Maddux and colleagues (2008) found that mimicking the mannerism of one’s opponent in negotiation increases trust and value creation. Here, we demonstrated that handshaking may be a particularly easy intervention to build rapport and encourage trust in negotiations. The benefits of handshaking can be accrued not only in integrative negotiations but also in distributive ones.
Our findings also extend prior research on the role of pre-play contact between parties in social dilemmas. This work has found that, through communication, parties can develop a shared identity that, in turn, encourages cooperation (e.g., Kerr, Garst, Lewandowski, & Harris, 1997; Swaab, Lount, & Brett, 2014). Here, we identified another route to the emotional aspect of communication: simply shaking hands before negotiations can increase cooperation at the bargaining table.
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Finally, our work also contributes to research on rituals. Handshakes are just one of the many types of small acts that shape social interactions; indeed, many types of social interactions are guided by similar “everyday” rituals (e.g., Durkheim, 1912; Goffman, 1967). Mirroring our results for the positive effects of handshakes, successful social rituals increase positive emotions, and can induce prosociality in groups (Collins, 2004; Xygalatas et al., 2013). Whereas this previous research suggests that rituals can increase harmony in existing groups, our results suggest that such rituals can have positive effects even in more antagonistic settings: negotiations between parties in conflict. Our results also contribute to an emerging literature on the positive impact of rituals on individuals in many domains, from alleviating grief (Norton & Gino, 2014) to improving consumption experiences (Vohs, Wang, Gino, & Norton, 2013) to reducing anxiety (Brooks et al., 2014). We show that a simple everyday ritual such as a handshake can create positive outcomes not just for individuals, but for dyads.
Directions for Future Work
Our results raise several questions for future research. Although we argue that handshakes are particularly relevant for negotiations because of people’s willingness to engage in them at the start of the negotiation, it seems possible that other nonverbal gestures could also incite cooperation even if people do not prefer to engage in them. Research points to the powerful role of physical touch in changing emotion and behavior (e.g., Levav & Argo, 2010; Stephen & Zweigenhaft, 1986). In a variety of domains, touch communicates compassion (Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, & Jaskolka, 2006), increases trust (Kurzban, 2001), incites cooperation (Kraus, Huang, & Keltner, 2010), and is even used among primates to communicate and affiliate with each other (De Waal, 1989). Other positive greeting gestures—such as a wave or smile—could also evoke cooperative behavior. Indeed, smiling increases cooperative behavior in economic games (Krumhuber et al., 2007; Scharlemann, Eckel, Kacelnik, & Wilson, 2001). Could other types of minimal touch, such as a brief pat on the arm, or other positive greetings, such as a smile, affect negotiation outcomes?
Relatedly, what are the aspects of a handshake that are most necessary to produce prosociality? Does the quality of handshakes moderate their effectiveness? Intuitively and empirically, limp handshakes may be aversive (Stewart et al., 2008). Given the critical role of synchrony in cooperative rituals (Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009), it is also possible that failed handshakes (e.g., when one person releases before the other) may have negative effects. This negative impact of failed synchrony may have particular resonance in cross-cultural settings. Bowing is common in Japan, shaking hands in America. If cooperative motives are deduced from the goodwill associated with greeting rituals, returning a proffered hand with a bow would still have positive outcomes; if not, then a handshake returned with a bow may be worse than no greeting ritual at all. Research by Pillutla and Chen (1999) found that individuals’ behavior in a social dilemma situation differed depending on whether they learned that others’ behavior was consistent or inconsistent with expectations. Similarly, if negotiators expect their counterparty to shake hands and the counterparty does not, the lack of handshaking may be particularly costly to reaching a deal. As Iranian President Rouhani’s refusal to shake American President Obama’s hand may suggest, the act of refusing to shake hands could incite antagonism as strongly as the act of shaking hands incites cooperation.
Future research could also further examine the psychological consequences of shaking hands prior to negotiations. In addition to signaling cooperation, shaking hands may influence positive affect, which has been shown to increase integrative agreements (Carnevale & Isen, 1986). Thus, the effects of handshakes on deal making may be both cognitive and emotional.
Conclusion
Humans use subtle sources of information—like nonverbal behavior—to determine whether to act cooperatively or antagonistically when they negotiate. One such nonverbal behavior is to shake hands before negotiations. People feel comfortable shaking hands at the start of a negotiation and believe handshakes convey a willingness to cooperate. In this paper, we proposed and found that handshakes increase cooperative behaviors, affecting outcomes for both integrative and distributive negotiations.
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