3 Copyright © 2005 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. THE MIND OF THE NEGOTIATOR When Good People (Seem to) Negotiate in Bad Faith Here’s a way out of mistrust and into mutual agreement. BY MAX H. BAZERMAN, DOLLY CHUGH, AND MAHZARIN R. BANAJI UPPOSE YOU’RE MEETING WITH top management to allocate budgets for the next fiscal year. You describe your team’s recent accomplishments in detail, then state: “I be- lieve my division deserves 60% of the credit for the corpo- ration’s overall success this past year.” To your surprise, another VP begins passing out some spreadsheets. “Actu- ally,” he says, “your division has been lagging behind for at least the past six months. I think we had better rely on the hard numbers.” Most of us can think of instances in which our motives have been questioned during a negotiation. You make an earnest comment to a coworker or client about the value of your contribution to the relationship, and it becomes clear that he doesn’t share your point of view. Such an ap- parent “attack” on your ethics is likely to leave you dis- mayed. More than anything else, you pride yourself on your integrity. You probably also can recall times when a negotiating opponent made what appeared to be a blatant misstate- ment. If you’re like most people, you assumed the person was lying to gain an advantage. But what if she genuinely believed in the false claim? It’s not easy to offer the benefit of the doubt, especially when the stakes are high. Reasonable, fair-minded negotiators often find them- selves in such situations—accusing others of unethical be- havior or facing such accusations themselves. Either way, the negotiation may head down a path that leads to im- passe and destroys the relationship. To fully understand the constraints on your own nego- tiating ability, you need to overcome the common as- sumption that ethically challenged behavior always results from a conscious decision to engage in self-rewarding be- havior. In fact, the unethical behaviors that we routinely engage in during negotiations are more likely to spring from ordinary psychological processes than from inten- tionally corrupt behavior. Here, we show you how to identify—both in yourself and in others—the types of ordinary unethical behavior that occur regularly in negotiation and suggest ways to prompt more ethical and rewarding agreements. Beyond bad intentions Most managers are aware of their conscious, or explicit, at- titudes and preferences, including their beliefs and stereo- types. For example, you may believe in principle that it’s unfair to promote (or fail to promote) individuals because of their race, gender, age, and so on. But such conscious thoughts and actions are only the tip of the iceberg. In recent years, psychologists who study decision making have debunked the assumption of inten- tionality as the main instigator of human behavior. In- stead, unconscious thoughts and feelings have emerged as a prime cause of our actions. Our research shows that most negotiators regularly make incorrect, self-serving statements without recogniz- ing that their behavior is ethically questionable. When you treat such negotiators as liars, they will probably be sur- prised, if not offended. They are unlikely to see that perva- sive self-deception causes their behavior to diverge from objective standards of measurement. The same holds true when others make snap judgments about your motives. You are likely to show the same bias; self-serving aspects of your behavior will be invisible to you. Unconscious bias, unethical behavior Four unconscious biases lie at the root of ordinary unethi- cal behavior in negotiation: 1. Implicit stereotypes. A striking finding to emerge from our research is the dis- parity between most people’s conscious and unconscious prejudices. The “Implicit Association Test,” developed by Anthony Greenwald, Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Brian Nosek and described in the sidebar, measures thoughts and feel- ings that may lie beyond conscious control. Sometimes an individual’s implicit and explicit attitudes are in tune with each other. At other times, particularly regarding sensitive issues such as race and gender, they can differ greatly. This fact can be difficult to reconcile, especially when you uncover attitudes within yourself that you find objec- tionable, even morally reprehensible. Yet implicit stereo- S