Role of personality style on bargaining outcomes

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify whether personality traits can help explain the outcomes that arise in bargaining outcomes. Design/methodology/approach Experiments with subjects playing the alternating-offers bargaining game are considered. Both full information and asymmetric information treatments are considered. Subjects also complete standardized Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessments. Findings Personality type measurements are shown to help explain the opening offers, rejections, and resulting wealth in the negotiations. It is shown that interactions between the personality dimensions are important and that the interaction between personality and information play a key role in bargaining outcomes. Research limitations/implications The research utilizes laboratory experiments to generate data. This expands our understanding of individual-level behavior, but suffers from the limitation of not replicating realistic bargaining situations. Practical implications The work should serve as a guide to organizations to identify traits of effective negotiators. Social implications Bargaining is a central economic activity. Being able to identify the root of differences in outcomes from negotiations should be able to inform institutional design issues. Originality/value Little work has been done connecting the rich literature in social psychology and management on personality to economic outcomes. The research on bargaining neglects to incorporate individual-level traits into the process. This research begins to bridge this gap and informs both bargaining theory as well as emphasizes on the importance of personality in application.