Psychology of Negotiation

Abstract

Every day we may negotiate with people many times without being aware of it. The social reality is actually a big negotiating table, and we are playing a variety of negotiators in different situations. In the community, you might have conflict with others, and in order to solve these conflicts, you need to negotiate. Negotiation, to some extent, is a psychological game. So if we have the knowledge of it, we can make a good deal. This paper talked about the significance of studying psychological of negotiation, people's different needs, motives, and temperaments in negotiation which could help negotiators to make successful negotiations with knowing them. Also, how to deal with the emotion problems people may have during negotiations.

Negotiation is an indispensable part of our daily life, because it happens in our lives almost every day. Once we get rid of negotiation, we're going to lose many of our rights, and right then it's hard to express our true thoughts, and even if there are conflicts of interests, we can not protect our own benefits. In essence, the direct reason that lead to negotiation is the demands of negotiating parties, or the demand of the organization that one represents, can not be ignored when the other party meet their demand. Therefore, the main purpose of two parties participating in a negotiation, are not only to pursue their own needs, but also to find an acceptable solution for both parties through the exchanging of views and consulting. Former U.S. President John F. Kennedy had a famous saying in his inaugural speech, "let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."

On some level, negotiation is a mental game. We can learn from psychology that people's needs, motives and behavior are closely related. What in a person's mind affect his behavior, so psychology of business negotiation has important impact on the behavior in negotiation. Using psychological knowledge in negotiations will help people win the game. Psychology of business negotiation refers to various mental activities of negotiators in negotiations. It is a subjective reflection of negotiators towards variety of situations, conditions and other objective facts in negotiation. For example, when negotiator first meets the opponent in negotiation, and if the opponent is polite, sincere, and easy to communicate, the negotiator will has a good impression toward the other, and he will be more confident and hopeful to make the deal.

Being familiar with psychology in negotiation, will help negotiators handle a variety of complex negotiation problem flexibly and efficiently. It is also significant for negotiators to develop excellent psychological quality, maintain a good attitude, judge the opponent's psychological states and motives correctly, and predict and guide opponent's behavior. The negotiator's self-confidence in making negotiation successful, the sincerity towards negotiation, the management and control of emotion in negotiation, and the prevention and handling with obstacles are indispensable psychological qualities that guarantee successful negotiation. Therefore, negotiator should develop and improve their own excellent psychological qualities, and abandon the bad psychological behavior.

The secret of negotiation is to grasp each other's needs. Demand is the core of the negotiation. Needs and meeting the needs is the common basis for negotiation. For example, I have my own needs and the ability to satisfy others, and others have their own needs and the abilities to satisfy my needs. Therefore, we can satisfy each other, and this becomes the common basis of negotiation.

Demand is a subjective state when one lacks something, which is a reflection of the needs of the people of a certain objective things, and that the objective needs of nature and society reflected in the brain. The demands in negotiation have several types:

1. Physiological needs: the original, basic, necessary needs for human survival, such as breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, etc. No matter how tight, intense the negotiation is, the personnel participating in the negotiation must ensure to meet the physiological needs. The better we set up the dining, resting and entertainment in the negotiation, the higher the efficiency of negotiation is going to be. On the contrary, if people's physiological needs can be satisfied, the negotiation can be directly affected.

2. Security needs: mainly refers to a person's sense of security, stability and order. Business negotiators have strong security needs. To consider the credit security, the negotiators usually like to deal with old customers, and they feel scruples in dealing with new customers. In business negotiations, negotiators are generally concerned about the risks in transactions. For negotiators that are more sensitive, they would worry the condition of the main qualifications, property, funds and reputation of the opponents. Sometimes they prefer to give up the attractive large transactions, to select more solid small transactions or even give up the transaction.

3. Social needs: mainly represent the needs to seek and improve interpersonal relationship. Business negotiators have social needs. Negotiations are typical social activities. In a society that economy and culture are well-developed, people's activities show their social needs. Social needs is a delicate and subtle needs, and it is related to one's personality, psychological characteristics, experiences, cultural upbringing, habits, and religious beliefs.

4. Esteem needs: including being respected and self-esteem. To embody it is to hope one himself or herself having ability and achievements, be qualified for a job, be eager to get the appreciation of others, fame and glory. This kind of psychological needs showing in negotiation is that some people like to show their identity and authority, or others like to listen to people's compliments and so on. The person who has a strong esteem needs might has aggressive and hostile behavior, or does not like to cooperate because of the working of psychological defense when his or her does not feel to be respected or the pride was hurt, and this will bring a big obstacle to negotiation. U.S. Oil Consortium would like to buy natural gas in Mexico with low price, so they had a negotiation about the price. The U.S. energy secretary believed that there was no potential buyer and Mexico would lower the price eventually since it was just a negotiation about money. However, the Mexicans needs were not only just selling natural gas at a good price, but also being respected and equal. And the Americans' behavior looked like a bully for Mexicans, so the Mexico government decided not to burn the natural gas to the ground instead of selling to the