The Influence of Own Cognitive and Other's Communicated Gain or Loss Frame on Negotiation Behavior

Research has shown that negotiators are more cooperative when they code their prospective outcomes as gains (gain frame) instead of as losses (loss frame). Supplementing this prior research that focused exclusively on the effects of negotiator's own frame on his or her own behavior, we argue that frames are communicated and that negotiators are influenced not only by their own frames, but by other's communicated frame as well. This proposition was tested using a 2 X3 design, manipulating the negotiator's own frame (gains/losses) and other's communicated frame (gains/losses/not given). As predicted, other's communicated gain frame reinforced the negotiator's gain frame but did not alter the negotiator's loss frame into a gain frame. Other's communicated loss frame, however, both reinforced the negotiator's own loss frame and altered the negotiator's gain into a loss frame. As a result, other's communicated gain frame, compared to other's communicated loss frame, induced lower demands and higher concessions when negotiators had a gain frame themselves. Loss framed negotiators, however, were not significantly influenced by other's communicated frame.