Author: briangunia

  • Anchoring indiscriminately: An ill-advised alternative to not offering at all

    People commonly have one of two intuitions about whether to make the first offer in a negotiation. Many people’s intuition is simple: Don’t. Wait to hear what the other side says and try to learn from it. While appropriate in certain situations, this approach has major problems that I and others have detailed before. But…

  • Can we all merge later?

    If you’re traumatized by traffic, the following claim may strike you as controversial if not downright sacrilegious. So let me apologize in advance for any offense. But then let me direct you to the common situation in which one of two lanes on your side of the roadway ends, necessitating a merge into the other.…

  • When and why to pick your battles: The hidden connection to logrolling

    We’ve all heard the hackneyed organizational advice to “pick your battles.” But there are two interrelated and semi-obvious problems with this (and much other) advice: No one can clearly say when or why it applies. Luckily, negotiation research has something indirectly but highly relevant to say about picking your battles. Since understanding what it is…