6 Negotiating Tactics Based on Psychological Science

Have you ever bought a used car and bargained for the price? Negotiated a salary? Tried to agree on a curfew with your teenager?

I must confess that, in practice, I am a terrible negotiator. I’d rather just pay $80 more for an old bookshelf on Craiglist than respond to the ad for a similar one listed for "$60 or best offer." For me, this is probably due to a lack of practice and a dose of social anxiety.

Negotiations can't be avoided—they exist in our personal relationships, professional advancements, financial marketplaces, and political structures.

And I’m not alone. Many people shy away from negotiating because they fear backlash, feel embarrassed, or just lack confidence in their ability to do it. But negotiations can't be avoided—they exist in our personal relationships, professional advancements, financial marketplaces, and political structures. (Just ask the members of Congress trying to reach an agreement with the opposite party on an economic stimulus bill!)

Our success in these life domains is often more affected by our willingness and ability to negotiate than we’d like to think.

So, what bargaining tactics have you tried? Of course, there are some tried-and-true ones, like being willing to walk away or aiming high first so you can ultimately split the difference. But these strategies alone don't provide the sort of negotiating power necessary for navigating complex deals, emotional situations, or sustainable relationships.

For these, we turn to psychological science for some pointers.

1. Talk less, listen more, and empathize with the other side

Sometimes we think negotiating well means being able to talk your way through something, dazzling the other side with persuasive arguments and winning phrases. But as psychologists know, a much more powerful force in any interpersonal interaction is empathy.

And this is not just an academic psychology concept. Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference, swears by empathy. In his book, he details how he would spend most of a hostage negotiation simply listening and asking open-ended questions so he could better understand the person he was dealing with.

Psychologists know that empathy is a powerful force in any interpersonal interaction.

Voss didn’t try to convince kidnappers to let hostages go with point-by-point arguments. Instead, he empathized with how scared they must have been feeling and how frustrating it was to have things go wrong. This empathy—making a personal connection to genuinely try to understand the other side—makes the conversation less of a fight. When that happens, the...

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