Study 1: Nonverbals in Negotiations
We asked an online sample of Americans to report which behaviors they would feel comfortable doing at the start of a negotiation, and then to select the one behavior that they believed would lead to the most cooperative negotiation. In order to compare beliefs about shaking hands to beliefs regarding as many other types of nonverbal behaviors as possible, we surveyed participants about a wide range of behaviors. We predicted that out of all these behaviors, people would feel most comfortable shaking hands with the counterparty and would also believe a handshake is most likely to produce a cooperative negotiation.
Method
Participants . Fifty Amazon Turk workers (Mage = 31.28, SD = 9.80, 34 males) who were U.S. citizens completed a survey about negotiations in exchange for $0.30 each.
Procedure . We told participants to “imagine you are about to have an important business negotiation with someone you have never met before. Which of the following gestures would you feel comfortable doing with the counterparty (i.e., the person you will negotiate with) before the negotiation?” Participants could check multiple gestures. The list included twelve gestures (randomly ordered) that we thought individuals might be willing to do before a negotiation and which might affect evaluations (both positive and negative) of the counterparty: four gestures that involved touch: shake hands with the counterparty, hold hands with the counterparty, touch the arm or shoulder of the counterparty, hug the counterparty; four gestures that conveyed a positive greeting: wave at the counterparty, make positive eye contact (e.g., an open gaze) with the counterparty, wink at the counterparty, bow or nod your head to the counterparty; and four gestures that conveyed a negative greeting: frown at the counterparty, look or turn away from the counterparty, cross arms in front of your chest, make negative eye contact (e.g., glare) at the counterparty. Next, we showed participants a list of the behaviors they had selected and asked them to choose the one gesture that they believed would “lead to the most cooperative (e.g., the most friendly and positive) negotiation experience.”
Results
100% of participants reported that they would be comfortable shaking hands with the counterparty at the start of a negotiation. 90% of participants also reported they would be comfortable making positive eye contact, 60% would bow or head nod to the counterparty, and 44% would wave. Less than one third of the participants selected the other eight options, showing that only a minority would feel comfortable doing these nonverbal behaviors at the start of a negotiation. Participants selected handshake more than every other option, even marginally more than positive eye contact, χ2(1, 50) = 3.37, p = .07, φ = 0.26.
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The majority of participants also chose handshake as the one behavior that would lead to the most cooperative negotiation experience (34 people), significantly more than the number who selected positive eye contact (13 people), χ2(1, 50) = 12.97, p < .01, φ = 0.51. In contrast, just one person selected touching the counterparty’s arm, one selected hugging, and one selected waving.
Discussion
Not only did all people surveyed feel comfortable shaking hands at the start of a negotiation, shaking hands was the gesture most frequently selected that people would feel comfortable doing compared to the other nonverbal gestures. Further, shaking hands was also most often selected as the one behavior that would lead to a cooperative negotiation. These results highlight why handshakes are uniquely relevant to producing cooperative motives in negotiations: first, because people are willing to engage in them before the negotiation and, second, because they signal cooperation.
Study 2a: MBA Integrative Negotiations
Before experimentally testing the effect of handshakes on negotiation outcomes, we first measured the relationship between handshakes and integrative negotiation outcomes in Studies 2a and 2b. Although randomly assigning pairs to shake hands is necessary to determine the causal effect of handshakes, such experiments suffer from a demand artifact: participants might infer that they are supposed to act cooperatively when an experimenter tells them to shake hands. A correlational design instead allows us to observe the relationship between handshakes and negotiation outcomes without any such experimental demand artifacts.
We expected that handshakes would correlate with higher joint outcomes in integrative negotiations. In Study 2a, MBA students in a negotiation class chose to shake hands or not before an integrative negotiation and subsequently reported their outcomes in a survey.
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Method
Participants . One hundred six MBA student pairs1 who attended a negotiation course at a top business school in the Midwestern United States completed an integrative negotiation.
Procedure . Participants completed their negotiation in class with a randomly assigned partner. To increase our sample size and generalizability, we sampled across two classes. One class completed the New Car negotiation (Nadler, Thompson, & Morris, 1998; n = 37); the other completed the New Recruit negotiation (Neale, 2006; n = 69). After the negotiation, each pair completed a survey.
Materials . The New Car and New Recruit negotiations require pairs to negotiate the buying and selling of a car, and the job offer details for a new employee, respectively. Both negotiations have exactly the same structure: pairs negotiate eight issues with five outcome options for each issue. For instance, in the car negotiation, parties must determine a car price ranging from $50,000 to $58,000 in $2,000 increments, a car color (black, red, blue, green, or yellow), and so on. Each party has a point schedule in their confidential information that explains their preferences. Of the eight issues, two are distributive (parties have opposite preferences of the same point magnitude), two are compatible (parties have the same preferences), and four are variable-sum (parties have opposing preferences but different point magnitudes). If negotiators integrate their interests by compromising across the variable-sum issues, they can divide more points than if they compromise on each of the variable-sum issues individually. Based on the pairs’ decisions on the issues, each party achieves a number of points representing the extent to which they achieved their interests in the negotiation.
The survey asked pairs whether or not they shook hands with their partner before beginning the negotiation (Yes, No, or Do not remember), whether or not they knew their partner prior to the negotiation (Yes or No), and how much they enjoyed the negotiation (1 = Not at all; 7 = A lot).
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Results
Because both negotiations have the same integrative structure but different possible point totals, we standardized the pairs’ total scores for each of the two negotiations. Of the 106 pairs, three of these did not report their final score in the survey and are therefore dropped from analyses. Pairs who shook hands (n = 74) had a higher joint outcome (M = 0.13, SD = 0.92) than pairs who did not shake (n = 29; M = -0.33, SD = 1.11), t(101) = 2.13, p = .04, d = 0.45.
Negotiation type did not moderate the effect of shaking on point totals, F(1, 99) < 1. There was no effect of shaking hands on how much pairs reported enjoying the negotiation, (handshake vs. no handshake: M = 5.93, SD = 0.96 vs. M = 5.62, SD = 1.15), t(101) = 1.41, p > .10.
Whether or not pairs previously knew each other did not affect their likelihood of shaking, χ 2(1, 103) < 1, marginally improved their joint score, t(101) = 1.66, p = .099, d = 0.33, and did not moderate the effect of shaking on point totals, F(1, 99) < 1.
Shaking hands predicted the joint score when controlling for knowing each other in a linear regression, β = -0.21, p = .04.
Discussion
These results suggest that negotiators who shake hands earn higher joint integrative outcomes. Because we asked about handshaking after the negotiation was complete, it is possible that pairs who achieved higher joint outcomes were simply more likely to remember shaking hands—regardless of whether they actually did. We therefore videotaped another group of MBA students negotiating in Study 2b.
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