How often do people actually negotiate? (new paper)
Katherine Qianwen Sun (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Mateo Di Stasi (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Jordi Quoidbach (ESADE) and myself published a new paper called "Daily Negotiation and Its Effects on Short-term Pleasantness and Longer-term Well-being" (open access) to see how often people actually negotiate.
You can read the paper and download it here.
We tracked participants for a week and asked them randomly throughout the day what they were doing. If they had been involved in a conversation, we asked them whether the conversation contained elements of a negotiation.
What I've learnt from this project is the following:
- Negotiating is not one activity, but contains several elements
This sounds kind of obvious, but I actually do like that we now dissected this one big term into eight distinct elements (see Figure pasted below). I think this can help us more clearly understand individual processes. - One in three conversations contain negotiation elements
Negotiations are indeed much more common than we think. Negotiation scholars have been saying that "we negotiate all the time" for a while, but now we have direct measurement evidence for this. - "Reaching an agreement", or avoiding a negotiation impasse is almost four times as common as "bargaining over something" (10.4% vs 2.7%)
I teach negotiation backwards and still start with "claiming value" and aggressive and precise opening offers. My teaching prepares for what's rare and asks students to improvise what's common. What's rare can still be important of course: saving a few percent on a house is worth months or years of income. - Negotiators report a dip in mood in the moment, and also report higher overall well-being
We don't have experimental controls so can't claim causation here. This association could also be caused by people who report higher well-being, then also being more likely to negotiate. At least we can't currently rule this out.
Martin Schweinsberg
| Process | Share of interactions | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Reach an agreement | 10.4% | Concluding a negotiation by settling on a defined set of terms accepted by all parties. |
| Make a joint decision that considers others’ preferences | 6.8% | Reaching a shared decision by integrating preferences across multiple parties. |
| Navigate a conflict | 4.9% | Managing emotional tension and disagreement so interaction remains workable. |
| Resolve an issue in a way that’s acceptable for all | 4.8% | Addressing underlying problems so each party’s core needs are met. |
| Convince someone to do something | 4.7% | Influencing another party to take a specific action they would not have chosen on their own. |
| Bargain over something | 2.7% | Exchanging offers and concessions to allocate resources or determine terms. |
| Convince someone to see things my way | 2.6% | Shaping how another party interprets or understands the situation. |
| Act as a mediator | 1.5% | Facilitating communication between disputing parties as a neutral third party. |
Sun, Schweinsberg, Di Stasi and Quoidbach (2026) found that reaching an agreement, at 10.4% of interactions, is almost four times as common as bargaining over something, at 2.7%. Frequencies are the raw percentages reported in Figure 2 of the published article.