Empirical research in the behavioural sciences shows that the Trump administration has not, to date, adopted an efficient strategy to negotiate with Iran. Negotiations between the US and Iran on April 11-12 in Islamabad, Pakistan were deemed the last attempt at ending a war that’s on the verge of causing a global economic crisis.
To explain why the first round of negotiations between the US and Iran failed, US Vice President Vance said Iran did not agree to terms about its nuclear efforts and that the US gave Tehran its “final and best offer”. Vance put an end to the 21-hour long talks and the US delegation made a swift exit after it had stayed less than 24 hours in the country.
The US’s “final and best offer” has shown a deep misunderstanding of the dynamics and the psychology of negotiations. It would be laughable if world peace, looming world hunger, and a catastrophic economic crisis weren’t at stake.
What led to the breakdown in talks?
Contrary to what Vance claimed, putting an offer in the early stage of a negotiation is quite counter-productive to solving a conflict.
Empirical research on negotiations demonstrates that the timing of offers is critical. Making an early offer in negotiations decreases information exchange between negotiators and increases the competitive dimension of negotiations.
It often escalates into a war of positions where negotiators mostly seek to defend and argue about their positions, thus becoming cognitively rigid rather than trying to understand what drives the other party’s behaviour. In contrast, an offer in the later stages of negotiations enables everyone to first understand the underlying (unpublicised) interests, motivations, needs and concerns of the different parties.
When an offer is made later rather than earlier, negotiators have more leeway to exchange information and explore creative solutions that meet the different parties’ underlying interests; they are less likely to engage in positional, competitive bargaining early in the process (which then colours the entire subsequent interaction). What this means in plain terms is a key measure of negotiators’ effectiveness is their ability to seek information and ask questions rather than solely making claims.
Even when both parties are willing to reach painful compromises, a lot of time is required to explore underlying interests, discuss thorny issues, disclose sensitive information, and look for solutions that are mutually acceptable. In fact, research has shown that discussing multiple simultaneous offers, that is, discussing several potential scenarios and options for compromise at the same time, is more efficient than making a single unilateral offer.
Contrary to what the US Vice President claimed, the first offer or idea one devises is rarely the best offer or idea for reaching a compromise and solving a conflict as negotiators are often subject to biased information search and biased information processing (e.g., they interpret information incorrectly and fail to accurately understand the other party’s interests and preferences). This is even more the case when the conflict is not only about interests, but also about sacred values. In this case, offering concessions on values and symbols (e.g., symbolic recognition of the other party) is effective in making the other concede in return. For example, the Trump administration seems to misunderstand the importance of national pride and symbolic recognition in the uranium enrichment issue.
Timing is everything
Findings on negotiations additionally show that negotiators are not prone to making concessions early in negotiations. Putting an offer on the table at a early stage means putting an offer before the other party is ready to make concessions. Indeed, people are more likely to make concessions at the end rather than at the beginning of negotiations. Two reasons may explain that. First, at the beginning, there is little trust.
It takes time to build trust and at the beginning the parties interpret every move from the other side through the lens of the distrust they experience themselves. For example, people reject an offer that comes from the other side just because it comes from the other side: they evaluate an offer based on who makes it, regardless of how interesting it is intrinsically; this phenomenon characterises negotiation and has been termed reactive devaluation. This is because we construe that another person’s offer must be solely driven by their interests, and we construe our interests as antagonistic to theirs.
Second, the “psychological cost” of walking away from a negotiation evolves over time.
At the beginning of a negotiation, walking away and reaching an impasse bears little psychological cost because little energy or effort have been invested whereas at the end of a negotiation, walking away and reaching an impasse is far more costly: an impasse would mean that all the time spent was for nothing. This is an application of a bias that is well-known by psychologists, namely escalation of commitment. The more (the less) we invest time and pursue a certain course of action, the more (the less) we want it to succeed.
In fact, tactics that are used to exert pressure and make the other yield are more effective at the end rather than at the beginning of negotiations. For example, making a threat late in the process is much more effective than making a threat early in the process. Similarly, expressing anger at the other late in the process is much more effective than expressing anger early. In general, explicitly aggressive moves are less effective early and more effective late. The way aggressive tactics are perceived varies over time: they convey too much negative intentions at the opening and are deemed more acceptable once a relationship is built. Even though unpredictability can be effective, it is still better to start expressing positiveness earlier in the negotiation so that negotiators create positive impressions first.
Thus, results from empirical research converge to demonstrate that negotiation is a game with different phases or sequences: open discussions first; bargaining at the end. Using aggressive tactics early in negotiations makes finding out about interests and uncovering cooperative solutions very unlikely. The ability not to close one’s mind too early in the process and keep things open throughout as much as possible is critical. This is why patience is key in negotiations.
Managing the timing dimension in negotiations is clearly essential for success. The same behaviour put at the end rather than at the beginning of negotiations will yield completely different results.
In negotiations, it’s often a question of when to make a move rather than whether to make a move.
In this way, empirical research on negotiations suggests that negotiation is like a dance. One needs to proceed by trial and error before constructing compromises that are mutually acceptable. It takes time to understand someone else and build a relationship – exactly as is the case in a romantic relationship.
Needless to say, the aforementioned research has mostly been published in US academic journals dedicated to the behavioural sciences. It is well known to negotiation scholars and experts in the US.
Dissecting the telltale signs of amateurism
Vance’s position that the US gave Iran its “final and best offer” was, thus, that of an amateur. This is all the more apparent given that negotiations between the US and Iran are quite complex and include multiple issues: reopening the strait of Ormuz, implementation of steps to limit and control Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missiles, access to a civil nuclear program, the lifting of economic sanctions, guarantees that war will not resume, etc.
Wanting to reach an agreement on such difficult issues in such little time denoted a lack of negotiation experience that was simply astonishing.
Negotiations that led to an agreement with Iran on nuclear matters under the Obama administration took more than 20 months, whereas those led by Vance in Pakistan earlier this month took 21 hours.
Experts like Federica Mogherini who was in charge of negotiations with Iran on behalf of the European Union, have underscored the Trump delegates’ substantial lack of knowledge and understanding of the technical aspects of negotiating.
In this respect, the failure of the US versus Iran talks in Pakistan was in no way surprising. It was fully consistent with, and predicted by, empirical research on the psychology of negotiation.
Making an early offer is very ineffective in solving conflict. For instance, the very same error explained why negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians failed in Camp David in 2000, even though the two parties wanted to reach a compromise at that time – the consequences of this failure have been catastrophic. As a close observer recalled, the parties made their initial offers early in the negotiation process, well before “neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians had been prepared to fully own up to the fears and needs of the other”.
All of this has denoted a major flaw by the Trump administration in how to handle negotiations with Iranians (among others) since the start of the war till now. Negotiating is not about imposing terms unilaterally on the other party. Nor is it about making the other party capitulate and accept an unconditional surrender. That strategy works in negotiations where there is only one variable to negotiate upon (typically, a competitive issue such as price), or when you undoubtedly are in a position of power – as would be the case if you were a wealthy real estate developer in New York city. But that strategy does not work in negotiations where there are multiple variables to negotiate upon and where meeting complex, underlying interests and discovering creative solutions is necessary to achieve a good deal, or when the balance of power is uncertain.
To paraphrase yet another Republican US President Eisenhower, negotiation is:
“The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
On all counts, what happened between the US and Iranian delegations on April 11-12 in Pakistan did not look like real negotiations.
A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!
Source:
theconversation.com
