Bargaining and the management of information: The effects of trust and suspiciousness

The purpose of the present study was to investigate, within the bargaining context, the effect of trust and suspiciousness on four categories of information: providing fictitious information, providing nontruthful information, providing personal disclosures, and seeking clarification. Participants role-played the buying and selling of a used car. Trust was viewed as a relational variable, that is, as being embedded in the relational milieu and history of the bargainers. Suspiciousness was treated as an individual difference variable, a personality trait concerned with the degree to which bargainers generally are predisposed to believe another bargainer. Following an experiment in which dyads role-played the buying and selling of a car, suspiciousness was found to be correlated with providing nontruthful information, with high suspicious bargainers providing more nontruthful information than low suspicious bargainers. Likewise, bargainers who did not trust each other provided more fictitious and nontruthful information than bargainers who trusted each other. Role differences were found. Buyers provided more nontruthful information and personal disclosures than sellers, and sellers sought more clarification than buyers.