Sweet Little Lies: Social Context and the Use of Deception in Negotiation

Abstract

Social context shapes negotiators' actions, including their willingness to act unethically. We use a simulated negotiation to test how three dimensions of social context-dyadic gender composition, negotiation strategy, and trust-interact to influence one micro-ethical decision, the use of deception. Deception in all-male dyads was relatively unaffected by trust or the other negotiator's strategy. In mixed-sex dyads, negotiators consistently increased their use of deception when three forms of trust (identity, benevolent, deterrent) were low and opponents used an accommodating strategy. However, in all-female dyads, negotiators appeared to use multiple and shifting reference points in decidin..