Negotiation Research and Improving Your Negotiation Techniques: The Similarity Effect in Business Negotiations

The evidence from social science and negotiation research is clear, and may have implications for a negotiator’s bargaining technique at and away from the negotiation table: A negotiator’s behavior is powerfully influenced by the actions of those who are like her.
A classic case study by Harvey Hornstein, Elisha Fisch, and Michael Holmes found that New York City residents were highly likely to return a lost wallet after learning that a “similar other”—another New Yorker—had first tried to do so.
But evidence that a dissimilar other—a foreigner—had tried to return the wallet did not increase the likelihood that they would try. When people are trying to determine how to act, they pay attention to how others like them behave in the same situation.
Implications for Negotiation Techniques
Negotiators who overlook the value of similarity in influencing decision making can rely on the wrong individuals to deliver important messages.
One common mistake is to take sole responsibility for communicating the wisdom of a particular policy or the need for change. By taking on the sole burden of persuasion, negotiators give too much credit to their position in the organizational hierarchy or their own powers of influence.

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

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The most effective communicators recognize when they are not the most effective communicators. Specifically, they know that the best route to influence can be from the side rather than from above. For influence practitioners, this means allowing individuals who haven’t yet changed in the desired direction to hear from those who have. Even one exposure to the favorable positions of peers on a topic can have more impact than multiple exposures to the same position from a negotiation opponent or a supervisor.
Both inside and outside the organizational envelope, then, the same principle applies: persuading one individual by providing evidence that some very different others have done so can be a big waste of time.
A related point: when working to ensure that the voices of supportive individuals will be heard, leaders should give greatest priority to those who are most similar in circumstances to the still-unconvinced. Imagine that resistance to a beneficial change is strongest among the longest-employed members of a department. This group is most likely to be influenced by a fellow old-timer who has genuinely embraced the rationale for change. Therefore, leaders would be well advised to resist the temptation to encourage a newer (although more articulate) member of the group to speak up instead. Canny sales managers teach a version of this lesson to their troops by coaching them to use testimonials from satisfied customers who share a similar business background with new prospects.

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Related Business Negotiations Article: Specific versus Abstract Negotiation Skills Training
First published on November 10, 2009.
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