Misperceiving negotiation counterparts: When situationally determined bargaining behaviors are attributed to personality traits

Several experiments provided evidence that negotiators make systematic erro rs in personality-trait attributions for the bargaining behaviors of their counterparts. Although basic negotiation behavior is highly determined by b argaining positions, negotiators primarily interpret their counterpart's be havior in terms of the counterpart's personality, such as his or her level of cooperativeness or agreeableness. Data support a model of 4 processes th at contribute to misperceptions: (a) the primacy of situations in determini ng bargaining behavior, (b) the primacy of personality traits in attributio ns, (c) the-lack of sufficient information about the other's situation to d iscount personality attributions, and (d) the potentially self-confirming c onsequences of personality attributions for subsequent interactions. The au thors discuss implications for research areas such as social cognition in n egotiation, accuracy in social perception, and the dynamics of belief confi rmation.