{"id":34417,"date":"2026-08-19T10:40:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=34417"},"modified":"2026-08-18T14:24:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T18:24:51","slug":"negotiation-is-a-routine-part-of-daily-life-not-a-rare-high-stakes-event-finds-new-study-at-esmt-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2026\/08\/negotiation-is-a-routine-part-of-daily-life-not-a-rare-high-stakes-event-finds-new-study-at-esmt-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiation is a routine part of daily life, not a rare high-stakes event, finds new study at ESMT Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The study\u00a0Daily Negotiation and Its Effects on Short-term Pleasantness and Longer-term Well-being<\/a>,\u00a0led\u00a0by\u00a0Katherine Qianwen Sun<\/a>\u00a0(UCLA Anderson School of Management),\u00a0along with\u00a0Martin Schweinsberg<\/a>\u00a0(ESMT\u00a0Berlin),\u00a0Matteo Di Stasi<\/a>\u00a0(CUNEF Universidad), and\u00a0Jordi\u00a0Quoidbach<\/a>\u00a0(ESADE Business School),\u00a0was\u00a0published in the peer-reviewed journal\u00a0Negotiation and Conflict Management Research. Using an app-based experience-sampling method, the researchers tracked 302 participants over\u00a0the course of a\u00a0week, prompting them at random moments throughout the day to report their mood and whether their most recent interaction involved any element of negotiation, resulting in 5,286 data points.<\/p>\n

The findings challenge three assumptions<\/strong> that have long shaped how negotiation is studied and taught:<\/p>\n

First, negotiation is far more frequent<\/strong> than existing research assumed.\u00a0More than 30\u00a0percent of everyday social interactions involved at least one negotiation process, such as reaching an agreement, making a joint decision, resolving a disagreement, persuading someone, bargaining, or mediating between others.<\/p>\n

Second,\u00a0negotiation\u00a0also looks different<\/strong> from how it is typically portrayed. Classic bargaining\u00a0or\u00a0the exchange of offers and concessions most\u00a0closely associated\u00a0with the term \u201cnegotiation\u201d accounted for just 2.7 percent of interactions.\u00a0The most common process was\u00a0trying to\u00a0reach an agreement\u00a0(almost\u00a0four\u00a0times\u00a0as common:\u00a010.4 percent of interactions). Everyday negotiation\u00a0appears to involve\u00a0agreement-seeking\u00a0and joint decision-making more than the\u00a0zero-sum exchange it is often assumed to be.<\/p>\n

Third, negotiation is not confined to the workplace<\/strong>.\u00a0While it was most prevalent in interactions with coworkers, present in 54 percent of such interactions,\u00a0it was\u00a0also common in personal relationships. Around 30 percent of interactions with friends, family members, and\u00a0romantic partners\u00a0involved some form of negotiation.<\/p>\n

The researchers find that interactions involving negotiation were associated with a measurable\u00a0negative\u00a0dip in momentary mood, comparable in size to the mood boost typically associated with interacting with coworkers or relatives, but in the opposite direction.\u00a0Despite this, participants who negotiated more\u00a0frequently\u00a0also\u00a0reported higher general well-being, pointing to a\u00a0possible link\u00a0between the willingness to negotiate and longer-term well-being. The study additionally finds no significant differences in negotiation frequency by gender or age, contradicting commonly held stereotypes, such as the assumption that women negotiate less often than men.<\/p>\n

\u201cNegotiation has a reputation as something confined to boardrooms and big-ticket purchases,\u201d says Martin Schweinsberg, professor at ESMT. \u201cBut our data\u00a0shows\u00a0that people are\u00a0negotiating constantly.\u00a0Negotiation is\u00a0woven into the ordinary give-and-take of daily life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors caution that the association between negotiation frequency and well-being is correlational, not causal: individuals with higher baseline well-being may simply be more inclined to negotiate. They call for longitudinal and interventional research to\u00a0establish\u00a0causality, as well as further studies into what people negotiate over and what outcomes they achieve.<\/p>\n

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JOURNAL<\/h4>\n

Negotiation and Conflict Management Research<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The study\u00a0Daily Negotiation and Its Effects on Short-term Pleasantness and Longer-term Well-being,\u00a0led\u00a0by\u00a0Katherine Qianwen Sun\u00a0(UCLA Anderson School of Management),\u00a0along with\u00a0Martin Schweinsberg\u00a0(ESMT\u00a0Berlin),\u00a0Matteo Di Stasi\u00a0(CUNEF Universidad), and\u00a0Jordi\u00a0Quoidbach\u00a0(ESADE Business School),\u00a0was\u00a0published in the peer-reviewed journal\u00a0Negotiation and Conflict Management Research. Using an app-based experience-sampling method, the researchers tracked 302 participants over\u00a0the course of a\u00a0week, prompting them at random moments throughout the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"no","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[526,789,349,334,7],"tags":[805,804,162,853,854,856,855],"class_list":["post-34417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-behaviour","category-family","category-happiness-2","category-money_finances","category-relationships","tag-agreeing","tag-arguing","tag-conflict","tag-deciding","tag-differences","tag-life","tag-negotiating"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34418,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34417\/revisions\/34418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}