Why everyday negotiation may be good for us
We tend to think of negotiation as something reserved for boardrooms and big deals. But much of the negotiation we do happens in ordinary conversations, and it may be doing more for us than we realize.
When Amazon negotiated its acquisition of Whole Foods, it was a high-stakes deal. The deal was conducted in secret, as Amazon insisted on exclusive talks before announcing an agreed price of $42 a share. This is precisely the kind of deal we picture when we hear the word ‘negotiation’: powerful parties, significant sums of money, and carefully calculated strategies.
Yet research on how we negotiate suggests that this style of negotiation is only a small part of what people actually negotiate every day.
More generally, negotiation usually brings to mind uncomfortable conversations about asking for a pay rise, navigating business deals, or bargaining over prices.
But research by Katherine Qianwen Sun, Martin Schweinsberg, Matteo Di Stasi, and Esade Professor Jordi Quoidbach suggests that much of the negotiation we do is far more ordinary and embedded in daily life. Published in Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, the study examined thousands of everyday social interactions to understand how often we negotiate and how it affects people.
Many daily discussions are negotiations
The researchers studied a group of 302 people in the UK and US. Participants were sent multiple notifications throughout the day using an app. The app prompted them to log their recent social interactions. In total, 4,384 interactions were noted, and 33.55% of them involved some kind of negotiation.
For this study, ‘negotiation’ was defined broadly as reaching an agreement, resolving an issue in a way acceptable to all parties, persuading someone to do something or see things differently, navigating a conflict, making a joint decision, bargaining, or mediating.
Reaching a mutual agreement was the most commonly reported negotiation process, occurring in about 10.4% of interactions, while bargaining appeared in only 2.7%. Typically, negotiation is thought of as two opposing parties haggling over the best deal, or each trying to persuade the other to think or act in the same way. In everyday life, however, negotiation is more often about finding a way forward together.
This pattern is also visible in the workplace. Research by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) found that 44% of working-age adults in the UK had experienced conflict at work during the previous 12 months. Conflict is more about disputes, disagreements, or difficult relationships, rather than negotiation, but resolving these conflicts can require negotiation. Informal discussion with the other person involved was one of the most common ways people attempted to smooth over the conflicts.
Work is the main negotiating arena
Negotiation was most common in workplace interactions. About 54% of interactions with coworkers involved some form of negotiation. Close personal relationships with friends, romantic partners, or family members didn’t require so many negotiations. About 30% of interactions with close personal partners included negotiation.
This highlights how subtle negotiation can be; it’s not always about a weighty and important topic. It can be as simple as deciding who takes responsibility for a task, persuading a colleague to change an approach, resolving a disagreement, or agreeing on weekend plans.
The co-authors argue that their findings show negotiation as a fundamental part of everyday social life rather than a specialist skill practiced by executives in formal business settings. This suggests that negotiation isn’t just about reaching a desired outcome: it can also influence how people experience an interaction in the moment. A conversation with a colleague or partner has consequences beyond the immediate decision.
The uncomfortable part
So how does negotiating make us feel? At times, not great, in the short term. The researchers found that on the whole, people reported feeling less pleasant for a short time when they had to negotiate.
The effect was modest, but it was statistically significant, suggesting that negotiation can have an emotional cost in the moment, even when it is part of an otherwise ordinary interaction. The study did not establish whether every type of negotiation feels equally uncomfortable: the analysis looked at negotiation broadly, from reaching an agreement to bargaining, across different kinds of relationships.
But these findings can help to explain why people sometimes avoid difficult conversations. Negotiating can require us to make a request, disagree with someone, acknowledge competing preferences, or risk hearing “no”. The immediate experience may be uncomfortable even when addressing the issue is ultimately useful.
The potential benefits of negotiation
Interestingly, people who negotiated more often also reported higher levels of general well-being, despite the short-term unpleasant feelings.
That’s not to say that the study proves that negotiating alone causes boosted well-being. The study didn’t assess that relationship in detail. The researchers caution that this is an association, not evidence that negotiating causes higher well-being. Because the study was observational, it is also possible that people with higher baseline well-being are more likely to engage in challenging conversations in the first place.
Quoidbach and his co-authors nevertheless suggest that negotiation, while sometimes daunting, may be an important part of everyday life. Repeatedly addressing disagreements, expressing preferences, and finding mutually acceptable solutions may be associated with better relationships and a greater sense of agency.
What this changes about negotiation
Success in negotiation may be less about winning and more about navigating relationships and competing preferences.
The study also found no significant differences by age or gender in either how often people negotiated or how they felt when doing so. This runs counter to assumptions that men negotiate more and women find negotiation more uncomfortable than men.
The key findings for businesses are that negotiation may be relevant to far more interactions than formal training typically implies. Negotiation happens whenever people coordinate, persuade, manage disagreements, or make decisions together.
Whether learning to negotiate more effectively could improve well-being is a question that warrants further study.
As the researchers put it: “Negotiation, while sometimes daunting, is a fundamental part of everyday life. Although negotiation is often assumed to be a skill reserved for boardroom settings and executive roles, our findings suggest that it is linked to well-being across the broader population and across a wide range of everyday social contexts.”