Why Negotiators Should Reveal Their Deadlines: Disclosing Weaknesses Can Make You Stronger Francesca Gino and Don A. Moore Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A. On September 18, 1994, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, together with Senator Sam Nunn and General Colin Powell, departed for Haiti for one last effort to persuade General Raul Cedras (Haiti’s military commander) and his allies to relinquish power. Their negotiations were interrupted by a phone call from the then U.S. President Bill Clinton, who informed the negotiators that they had 30 min to leave Haiti because a U.S. invasion had already started. This time pressure helped produce a last-minute agreement in which the conflict was resolved peacefully (Dawson, 2001). Other examples of negotiations in which agreement is reached in the final moments are plentiful in both the popular press and research results (Kennan & Wilson, 1990; Roth, Murnighan, & Schoumaker, 1988). Despite the empirical evidence demonstrating Keywords social prediction, negotiation, time pressure, deadlines. Correspondence Francesca Gino, Carnegie Mellon University, CMU/Tepper, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15217, U.S.A.; e-mail: fgino@andrew.cmu.edu. Abstract Conventional wisdom holds that negotiators who are under time pressure should avoid revealing their final deadlines to the other side, especially if they are in a weak position. The present study questions this conventional wisdom. The experiment manipulates time pressure on the negotiators, knowledge of that time pressure, and each side’s power at the bargaining table. Power is manipulated by varying the quality of each side’s alternatives to negotiated agreement (BATNAs). Results show that negotiators benefited from revealing their final deadlines, regardless of the strength of their BATNAs. The discussion explores why this simple les- son is counterintuitive and why negotiators mistakenly believe they ought to keep their deadlines secret. The authors appreciate the support of a Berkman Faculty Development grant and gratefully acknowledge the support of the staff and facilities of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon University. Please address correspondence by email to fgino@andrew.cmu.edu (or) don.moore@alumni. carleton.edu. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research Volume 1, Number 1, Pages 77–96 ª 2008 International Association for Conflict Management and Blackwell Publishing, Inc. 77