Cognitive Biases in Negotiation Defined

Form of Bias	Definition
Escalation of commitment	Tendency for an individual to make decisions that persist in pursuing a failing course of action.
Mythical fixed-pie beliefs	Tendency to see negotiation as a zero-sum or win-lose situation with parties’ interests diametrically opposed.
Anchoring and adjustment	Being overly influenced by a standard or reference point (an anchor) and failing to make adjustments from it.
Issue framing and risk	Tendency to be unduly influenced by the positive or negative frame through which risks are perceived.
Information availability	Tendency to overweight information that is easily recalled or otherwise readily available at the expense of information that is critical but less salient.
The winner’s curse	Tendency to settle quickly on an outcome and then feel discomfort about a negotiation win that comes too easily.
Negotiator overconfidence	Tendency to believe that one’s ability to be correct or accurate is greater than is actually the case.
The law of small numbers	Tendency to draw inappropriate conclusions based on small data samples or a small number of examples.
Self-serving biases	Tendency to make attributions about causes of behavior that are self-serving (take personal credit for successes, blame aspects of the situation for negative results).
Endowment effect	Tendency to inflate the value of something you own or have in your possession.
Ignoring others’ cognitions	Failure to consider the other party’s thoughts and perceptions, inhibiting an accurate understanding of their interest and goals.
Reactive devaluation	Placing less value on concessions made by the other simply because the other party offered them.