Case Study
Negotiation Pause Study
Independent research, cited via Adam Alter
Researchers had 60 pairs of university students negotiate a job package, with one student role-playing a recruiter and the other a job candidate. Before beginning, some pairs were instructed to sit silently and simply think for a period before starting to communicate or negotiate at all.
Result: fewer than half the pairs paused for more than five seconds, but the pause was measurably valuable specifically in the three-to-12-second range — pairs that paused arrived at collectively better deals (a larger overall "pie," with both sides better off) than pairs that began negotiating immediately. Individually, the specific negotiator who paused longer before speaking tended to personally outperform their non-pausing counterpart within the same negotiation. The pause is credited with interrupting an automatic, adversarial "flailing" first response, giving negotiators time to identify concessions that cost them little but would meaningfully help the other side — the kind of creative, win-win move a snap response rarely finds. See Dual-Process Thinking (System 1 / System 2).
Discussed in
- Episode 201 — 201-how-messi-used-psychology-to-become-great