Behavioral Dynamics in Negotiations: How Specific Verbal Behaviors Relate to Negotiation Agreements and Negotiation Processes

Negotiations are dynamic social interaction processes constituted by the parties’ verbal behaviors. To overcome a predominant focus on negotiation-specific behaviors and to better understand the intricate dynamics underlying the negotiation process we draw on nonlinear dynamical systems theory and model negotiations as complex adaptive systems. Specifically, we explore 1) which role specific verbal behaviors within the entire interaction stream of the negotiation played in shaping the negotiation closure as agreement or non-agreement and 2) how these behaviors were embedded in the micro-temporal interaction stream. Our dataset comprised 22,880 coded verbal behaviors from 40 face-to-face negotiation training sessions with business professionals. Using a machine learning approach, we first estimated associations between each coded behavior and the type of negotiation closure (agreement vs. non-agreement) to identify particularly impactful behaviors. Exemplary findings include an association of apologies with agreements, whereas procedural suggestions were related to non-agreements. Employing a lag sequential analysis, we examined systematic behavioral sequences involving the identified behaviors. By incorporating both negotiation specific and general verbal behaviors, this study advances a whole system, process based account of which behaviors are associated with negotiation closure and how they are embedded in the interaction. Our findings suggest fruitful avenues for future research, including experimental studies that could further test the observed associations.