Negotiation

The first part of this paper traces a short history of the psychological st udy of negotiation. Although negotiation was an active research topic withi n social psychology in the 1960s and 1970s, in the 1980s, the behavioral de cision perspective dominated. The 1990s has witnessed a rebirth of social f actors in the psychological study of negotiation, including social relation ships, egocentrism, motivated illusions, and emotion. The second part of th is paper reviews five emerging research areas, each of which provides usefu l insight into how negotiators subjectively understand the negotiation: (a) mental models in negotiation; (b) how concerns of ethics, fairness, and va lues define the rules of the game being played; (c) how the selection of a communication medium impacts the way the game is played; (d) how cross-cult ural issues in perception and behavior affect the negotiation game; and (e) how negotiators organize and simplify their understandings of the negotiat ion game when more than two actors are involved.