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Egocentrism In Negotiations

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The authors. The authors of this article are attempting to examine whether or not egocentrism creates misperceptions in negotiating. Does it cause conflict due to the misunderstanding of each parties interests? They are approaching this from a psychological point of view and perform three experiments which they hope attest to the subject they are trying to prove. There are two authors of this article. C.K.W (Carsten) de Dreu and John R. Chambers. De Dreu is a professor of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam since 1998. He has also specialised in neurobiological and psychological foundations of cooperation, conflict, group decision making and creativity in humans. These alone I feel provide him with the background necessary to understand …show more content…

The idea that one’s own issues take priority over the other sides’ and can therefore lead to a result in the negotiations which are less satisfactory for both sides. When one’s own issues are most important there can be a miscommunication and it can lead to one overestimating or underestimating the importance of issues based on the importance to them. The other theory is one called the ‘Fixed-Pie Belief’, the assumption that if one side gains it is at the other sides’ expense. These are the theories which the authors hope to answer with the aid of this …show more content…

In particular they are inclined to see their interest as clashing, incompatible. This supports the idea of the ‘Fixed-Pie Belief’. The negotiations results will depend on whether parties have or do not have similar interests and whether or not the issues are or are not compatible with each other. Another implication which was found as a result from the experiments shows that biased conflict perceptions are quite strongly swayed by interests which relate to oneself. It was proven also that issues can be misconstrued to be ones of too great importance and one may then overestimate the amount of conflict. There is another implication as a result of the findings. If one is egocentric then they may fail to see opportunities upon which they could benefit, even when they are plain to see. The may be so focused on their issues and what they think is important and because of this both sides may not come out of the negotiation having gained

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