While etymologically the term negotiation comes from the Latin negotium, meaning negation of leisure, it is nonetheless a happy coincidence that it includes, almost covertly, the word EGO among its letters. Like a subtle reminder that we ourselves are often the main obstacle to overcome when building creative and sustainable agreements over time.
Hal Movius, in his excellent book Resolve, defines egocentrism as that unconscious tendency that leads us to assume that others will see the world as we see it. He explains that when we are negotiating or managing conflicts, this tendency translates into 4 cognitive biases or heuristics:
1. False consensus: tendency to overestimate the degree to which others’ opinions agree with our own. “If the other party has any sense, they should know that this presentation has no commercial impact—it’s too long and technical. I don’t think they’ll raise objections when we request changes.“
2. Fixed pie: we tend to assume that if something is important to us, it will be important to others as well, feeding a distributive or zero-sum view of negotiation since both parties will fight over the same thing. “Let’s not give in on payment terms. In this volatile context, we cannot risk becoming financially misaligned. It’s obvious they’ll come to pressure us on that front, but we cannot concede.”
3. Reactive devaluation: bias that leads us to assume that if the other party offers us something, it is because it is of low value to them; otherwise, they would not offer it unilaterally. The belief operating here, once again, is that if we were doing what the other party is doing, it would be because we have something to spare or it does not hurt us to concede it. But this is not necessarily the case. The other party is different and does not have to mirror our reality.
4. Fundamental attribution error: tendency to explain or interpret others’ behavior based on their personalities, attitudes, or intentions, underestimating contextual/environmental aspects that may be affecting such behavior. Conversely, when we explain our own actions, we tend to do so situationally. For example, we may assume that the person we are trying to influence is “stubborn and not open to innovation,” when in reality their behavior responds to the arrival of a new manager with different priorities, changed KPIs, new market conditions, etc. This happens because when we are self-absorbed, we tend to minimize the uniqueness of the other person’s context, assuming they operate under the same conditions as we do.
When we negotiate, it is normal to feel anxiety, uncertainty, and stress. We want negotiations to pass quickly, and this works against an empathetic and rigorous reading of the interests and perspectives of the other parties. This exacerbates the activation of these mental shortcuts (System 1) that make us feel comfortable and secure. As Peter Coleman explains, when faced with conflict, people seek a sense of coherence or control, to understand what is happening; when we try to understand, we tend to simplify; when we simplify, we often polarize conflicts in a self-absorbed manner. We fragment reality to our measure, and then we forget that we did so.
What can be done about it?
Simply becoming aware of these cognitive biases helps us prepare and build defenses. It is very healthy to understand how our mind works on autopilot, in order to activate the deliberative system. For example:
• For false consensus: Anticipate and expect that there will be divergences at the negotiation table, and that, far from being a bad sign, they constitute a demonstration of trust and collaboration. As systemic psychologist David Kantor says, when there is no opposition in a conversation, conversations tend to remain at a superficial level, with little co-construction of ideas.
• For fixed pie: Start from the opposite assumption: the other party does not want the same thing as I do, but rather has different interests and priorities that I need to know and discover. Bazerman and Malhotra, in an HBR article (Investigative Negotiation), spoke of approaching a negotiation as a detective approaches a crime scene: it is all about understanding the other side’s reality with curiosity, without presupposing anything. “An ordered world is not the order of the world,” recalling Buber, could be a good mantra in this regard.
• For reactive devaluation: Analyze what the other party offers in terms of satisfying one’s own interests, isolating the content of the proposal from the way it was communicated. Never reject something simply because it is a concession.
• For fundamental attribution error: Always start from a situational-structural analysis of the other party’s behavior. The other party’s behavior never responds to bad intentions (as an initial premise), but rather is embedded in a context of variables that we do not know and need to understand.