Maybe It's Right, Maybe It's Wrong: Structural and Social Determinants of Deception in Negotiation

Abstract

Context shapes negotiators' actions, including their willingness to act unethically. Focusing on negotiators use of deception, we used a simulated two-party negotiation to test how three contextual variables-regulatory focus, power, and trustworthiness-interacted to shift negotiators' ethical thresholds. We demonstrated that these three variables interact to either inhibit or activate deception, providing support for an interactionist model of ethical decision-making. Three patterns emerged from our analyses. First, low power inhibited and high power activated deception. Second, promotion-focused negotiators favored sins of omission, whereas prevention-focused negotiators favored sins of com..