Temporal Distance and Negotiation Issue Preference Ambiguity

Abstract

Negotiators must determine the relative importance of issues sometime prior to beginning negotiations. However, social psychological research suggests that the timing of such consideration, relative to the commencement of bargaining, may affect the importance attached to different issues. Because decision construal-level, decision-maker overconfidence, and situational effects on decision-making vary with the point in time before the start of negotiations at which decisions are made, it follows that when a negotiator decides on the relative importance of negotiation issues has an important effect on the shaping of preference structure. This paper argues for increased attention to these social cognitive processes in research on negotiator preferences and attempts to highlight the commonalities amongst these processes in order to stimulate increased investigational effort in this area amongst conflict researchers.