Understanding the first-offer conundrum: How buyer offers impact sale price and impasse risk in 26 million eBay negotiations.

How low is the ideal first offer? Prior to any negotiation, decision-makers must balance a crucial tradeoff between two opposing effects. While lower first offers benefit buyers by anchoring the price in their favor, an overly ambitious offer increases the impasse risk, thus potentially precluding an agreement altogether. Past research with simulated laboratory or classroom exercises has demonstrated either a first offer's anchoring benefits or its impasse risk detriments, while largely ignoring the other effect. In short, there is no empirical answer to the conundrum of how low an ideal first offer should be. Our results from over 26 million incentivized real-world negotiations on eBay document (a) a linear anchoring effect of buyer offers on sales price, (b) a nonlinear, quartic effect on impasse risk, and (c) specific offer values with particularly low impasse risks but high anchoring benefits. Integrating these findings suggests that the ideal buyer offer lies at 80% of the seller's list price across all products-although this value ranges from 33% to 95% depending on the type of product, demand, and buyers' weighting of price versus impasse risk. We empirically amend the well-known midpoint bias, the assumption that buyer and seller eventually meet in the middle of their opening offers, and find evidence for a "buyer bias." Product demand moderates the (non)linear effects, the ideal buyer offer, and the buyer bias. Finally, we apply machine learning analyses to predict impasses and present a website with customizable first-offer advice configured to different products, prices, and buyers' risk preferences.

The interplay of social rank perceptions of Trump and Biden and emotions following the U.S. presidential election 2020.

The outcome of the 2020 U.S. election between Trump and Biden evoked strong emotions. In U.S. American (Study 1; N = 405) and German (Study 2; N = 123) samples, we investigated how observers' group membership (i.e. political orientation) and the social rank attainment of both candidates (i.e. dominance vs. prestige) predicted emotional reactions. Trump was generally perceived as more dominant, and Biden as more prestigious. However, perceptions of social rank attainment differed depending on the observers' political orientation, either matching or not matching with the leaders (i.e. Republicans and Democrats, respectively). The candidate who did not share the participants' political orientation was perceived as less prestigious and more dominant and elicited stronger contrastive emotions (i.e. schadenfreude, malicious envy) and weaker assimilative emotions (i.e. happy-for-ness, sympathy, anger), and vice versa. Crucially, dominance and prestige perceptions explained variance in the emotional reactions of more conservative and more liberal participants. Prestige positively predicted assimilative emotions and dominance contrastive emotions. Our work advances theorising by providing evidence that dominance and prestige perceptions contribute to the elicitation of various emotions. Furthermore, it suggests that prestige and dominance are not fixed characteristics of liberal and conservative leaders but depend on the observers' group membership.

How Much Do Severely Injured Athletes Experience Sport Injury-Related Growth? Contrasting Psychological, Situational, and Demographic Predictors.

Sport injury-related growth (SIRG) describes the possibility for athletes to benefit psychologically from an injury. The present, preregistered online study examined an international sample of 335 athletes with impressive athletic biographies who sustained a severe sport-related injury. Expanding the extant literature, we empirically contrasted numerous psychological, situational, and demographic predictors of perceived SIRG-specifically, athletes' optimism, coping style, self-efficacy, athletic identity, social support, need satisfaction, and injury centrality. Our data first provide empirical evidence for perceived SIRG, even when statistically controlling for a potential social-desirability bias in athletes' responses. In addition, frequentist and Bayesian regression analyses showed that several psychological variables predicted perceived SIRG-particularly athletes' informational social support, positive reframing, optimism, and injury centrality. Finally, post hoc mediation analyses showed how these psychological variables account for different levels of perceived SIRG as a function of demographic variables. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, along with directions for future research.

Working from home during the COVID-19 crisis: How self-control strategies elucidate employees' job performance.

Employees around the globe experience manifold challenges to maintain job performance during the so-called work-from-home experiment caused by the COVID-19 crisis. Whereas the self-control literature suggests that higher trait self-control should enable employees to deal with these demands more effectively, we know little about the underlying mechanisms. In a mixed-methods approach and two waves of data collection, we examine how self-control strategies elucidate the link between teleworking employees' trait self-control and their job performance. Using a qualitative approach, we explored which strategies employees use to telework effectively (N = 266). In line with the process model of self-control, reported strategies pertained to situation modification (i.e., altering the physical, somatic, or social conditions) and cognitive change (i.e., goal setting, planning/scheduling, and autonomous motivation). Subsequent preregistered, quantitative analyses with a diverse sample of 106 teleworkers corroborated that higher trait self-control is related to job performance beyond situational demands and prior performance. Among all self-control strategies, modifying somatic conditions and autonomous motivation was significantly associated with job performance and mediated the self-control-performance link. This research provides novel insights into the processes by which employees productively work from home and inspires a broad(er) view on the topic of self-control at work.

Is Ego Depletion Real? An Analysis of Arguments.

An influential line of research suggests that initial bouts of self-control increase the susceptibility to self-control failure (ego depletion effect). Despite seemingly abundant evidence, some researchers have suggested that evidence for ego depletion was the sole result of publication bias and p-hacking, with the true effect being indistinguishable from zero. Here, we examine (a) whether the evidence brought forward against ego depletion will convince a proponent that ego depletion does not exist and (b) whether arguments that could be brought forward in defense of ego depletion will convince a skeptic that ego depletion does exist. We conclude that despite several hundred published studies, the available evidence is inconclusive. Both additional empirical and theoretical works are needed to make a compelling case for either side of the debate. We discuss necessary steps for future work toward this aim.

The Too-Much-Precision Effect.

Past research has suggested a fundamental principle of price precision: The more precise an opening price, the more it anchors counteroffers. The present research challenges this principle by demonstrating a too-much-precision effect. Five experiments (involving 1,320 experts and amateurs in real-estate, jewelry, car, and human-resources negotiations) showed that increasing the precision of an opening offer had positive linear effects for amateurs but inverted-U-shaped effects for experts. Anchor precision backfired because experts saw too much precision as reflecting a lack of competence. This negative effect held unless first movers gave rationales that boosted experts' perception of their competence. Statistical mediation and experimental moderation established the critical role of competence attributions. This research disentangles competing theoretical accounts (attribution of competence vs. scale granularity) and qualifies two putative truisms: that anchors affect experts and amateurs equally, and that more precise prices are linearly more potent anchors. The results refine current theoretical understanding of anchoring and have significant implications for everyday life.

The first-mover disadvantage: the folly of revealing compatible preferences.

The current research establishes a first-mover disadvantage in negotiation. We propose that making the first offer in a negotiation will backfire when the sender reveals private information that an astute recipient can leverage to his or her advantage. In two experiments, we manipulated whether the first offer was purely distributive or revealed that the sender's preferences were compatible with the recipient's preferences (i.e., the negotiators wanted the same outcome on an issue). When first offers contained only distributive issues, the classic first-mover advantage occurred, and first offers predicted final prices. However, a first-mover disadvantage emerged when senders opened with offers that revealed compatible preferences. These effects were moderated by negotiators' social value orientation: Proself negotiators were more likely to take advantage of compatible information than were prosocial negotiators. Overall, the key factor that determined whether the first-mover advantage or disadvantage emerged was whether the offer revealed compatible preferences. These results demonstrate that first offers not only provide numerical value but also convey qualitative information.

Do we fail to exert self-control because we lack resources or motivation? Competing theories to explain a debated phenomenon.

Exerting effort in a first task can impair self-control performance in a subsequent task. Hundreds of studies have examined this ego depletion effect, but the underlying mechanisms are still unknown. By contrasting the two most prominent models, the strength model and the process model, the following question takes centre stage: Do participants fail to exert self-control because they run short of an unspecified resource or because they lack the motivation to engage in the subsequent task? We contrasted competing predictions (N = 560) from these two models by manipulating monetary incentives to be donated to charity in the first of two tasks. We found evidence of the standard ego depletion effect-self-control performance was impaired after a high- versus a low-demand task in the no-incentive conditions. Incentives had an unexpected effect: Whereas participants in the incentive conditions showed higher intrinsic, autonomous motivation, they did not exert greater effort. This unexpected finding limited the applicability of our registered predictions; thus, we opted to test updated predictions. We discuss the theoretical implications of our understanding of the processes underlying ego depletion effects and their meaning for the ongoing debate about replicability and robustness.

Egalitarian norm messaging increases human resources professionals' salary offers to women.

Across the globe, men make markedly more money than women, even within the same position. We introduce egalitarian norm messaging as a potential intervention to increase women's salaries and counter the gender pay gap. In two preregistered experiments with seasoned professionals (N = 435, work experience: M > 8 years, salary negotiations: M > 18 per year), we find a significant gender pay bias-Human Resources (HR) experts offered markedly lower salaries in an online negotiation to (simulated) female versus male candidates with identical qualifications. Moreover, the experiments show that dynamic (Experiments 1a and 2), as well as static egalitarian norm messages (Experiment 1a), increased salary offers to women. Exploratory mediation analyses suggest that the dynamic egalitarian norm effect was driven by HR professionals' feeling of working toward a shared goal of greater equity. A message that merely increased awareness of the pay gap did not elicit this feeling and did not significantly increase salary offers to women but resulted in fairly equal treatment of men and women (Experiment 2). While the egalitarian norm intervention significantly increased salary offers to women, it also unexpectedly reduced offers to men, thereby reversing the gender bias (Experiment 2). We discuss the theoretical contribution with regard to gender pay bias and egalitarian norm interventions, as well as applied implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

"My Goal Is to Lose 2.923 kg!"-Efficacy of Precise Versus Round Goals for Body Weight Reduction.

Overweight individuals often struggle to lose weight. While previous studies established goal setting as an effective strategy for weight loss, little is known about the effects of numeric goal precision. The present research investigated whether and how the precision of weight loss goals-the number of trailing zeros-impacts a goal's effectiveness. In two preregistered, longitudinal experiments, we contrasted competing predictions as to whether precise (e.g., 2.923 kg) or round (e.g., 3.000 kg) goals are more effective compared to a waiting control condition. In Experiment 1 (N = 121), participants in the two goal conditions lost more weight compared to the control condition-an effect that was mainly driven by precise (rather than round) goals. In Experiment 2 (N = 150), we sought to replicate this effect but found no significant weight loss differences. An individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis across both experiments revealed that (a) the goal groups jointly lost more weight than the waiting control group and (b) the precise and round goal groups did not differ in weight loss success. An IPD-based multiple mediation analysis showed that healthier eating, but not physical exercise accounted for goal-setting-induced weight loss. We discuss possible explanations for the null findings in Experiment 2 and highlight directions for future research.

How individuals react emotionally to others' (mis)fortunes: A social comparison framework.

When confronted with others' fortunes and misfortunes, emotional reactions can take various forms-ranging from assimilative (happy-for-ness, sympathy) to contrastive emotions (envy, schadenfreude) and from prosocial (reward) to antisocial behavior (punish). We systematically tested how social comparisons shape reactions to others' (mis)fortunes with a newly developed paradigm with which we investigated envy, happy-for-ness, schadenfreude, and sympathy in a joint rigorous experimental setup, along with individuals' ensuing behavioral reactions. In nine experiments (Ntotal = 1,827), (a) participants' rankings on a comparison dimension relative to other people and (b) others' (mis)fortunes (changes in relative rankings) jointly determined how much individuals experienced the emotions. Upward comparisons increased envy and schadenfreude, and downward comparisons increased sympathy and happy-for-ness, relative to lateral comparisons. When the relevance of comparison standards (Experiment 4a) or the comparison domain (Experiment 4b) was low, or when participants did not have their own reference point for comparison (Experiment 4c), the effect of comparison direction on emotions was attenuated. Emotions also predicted the ensuing behavior: Envy and schadenfreude predicted less, whereas happy-for-ness and sympathy predicted more prosocial behavior (Experiments 5 and 6). Overall, the strongest social comparison effects occurred for envy and sympathy, followed by schadenfreude and happy-for-ness. The data suggest that envy and sympathy arise when comparative concerns are threatened, and happy-for-ness and schadenfreude arise when they are satisfied (because inequality increases vs. decreases, respectively) and predict behavior aimed at dealing with these concerns. We discuss implications for the function of fortunes-of-others emotions, social comparison theory, inequity aversion, and prospect theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Sex drive: Theoretical conceptualization and meta-analytic review of gender differences.

Few spheres in life are as universally relevant for (almost) all individuals past puberty as sexuality. One important aspect of sexuality concerns individuals' sex drive-their dispositional sexual motivation. A vigorous scientific (and popular) debate revolves around the question of whether or not there is a gender difference in sex drive. Several theories predict a higher sex drive in men compared to women, with some theories attributing this difference to biased responding rather than true differences. Currently, there is little consensus on how to conceptualize sex drive, nor does a quantitative summary of the literature exist. In this article, we present a theory-driven conceptualization of sex drive as the density distribution of state sex drive, where state sex drive is defined as momentary sexual motivation that manifests in sexual cognition, affect, and behavior. We conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis of gender differences in sex drive based on 211 studies, 856 effect sizes, and 621,463 persons. The meta-analysis revealed a stronger sex drive in men compared to women, with a medium-to-large effect size, g = 0.69, 95% CI [0.58, 0.81]. Men more often think and fantasize about sex, more often experience sexual affect like desire, and more often engage in masturbation than women. Adjustment for biased responding reduced the gender difference (g = 0.54). Moderation analyses suggest that the effect is robust and largely invariant to contextual factors. There was no evidence of publication bias. The discussion focuses on validity considerations, limitations, and implications for psychological theory and people's everyday lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How health message framing and targets affect distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: Maintaining safe physical distance is paramount to slowing the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)/coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), particularly indoors (e.g., while shopping). We used a health message intervention to motivate grocery store customers to engage in distancing behavior. METHOD: In an online experiment (N = 206) and a field experiment (N = 268; preregistered on OSF), we used a 2 × 2 between-subjects design and manipulated health messages (a) as gain-framed ("to foster health") versus loss-framed ("it could be deadly") and (b) as targeting different beneficiaries (customers themselves versus fellow citizens). In the field experiment, observers rated customers' distancing behavior during a random confederate encounter and a subsequent interview. We assessed customers' perceptions of risk and worry, perspective-taking, and state optimism as concurrent psychological processes to investigate customers' distancing behavior in correlational mediation analyses. RESULTS: Contrary to previous research, the intervention was more effective when pertaining to customers themselves than to their fellow citizens (Experiments 1-2). In addition, loss-framed messages were more effective than gain-framed ones (Experiment 2). The former behavioral effect was accompanied (and statistically mediated) by a concurrent psychological increase in customers' perceived risk and worry. CONCLUSIONS: Owing to their low cost and easy implementation, health messages constitute a promising means to promote physical distancing. Our results show that their effectiveness significantly depends on the framing and target of the health behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Anchoring and Sleep Inertia.

Many occupational settings require individuals to make important decisions immediately after awakening. Although a plethora of psychological research has separately examined both sleep and anchoring effects on decision-making, little is known about their interaction. In the present study, we seek to shed light on the link between sleep inertia, the performance impairment immediately after awakening, and individuals' susceptibility to the anchoring bias. We proposed that sleep inertia would moderate participants' adjustment from anchors because sleep inertia leads to less cognitive effort invested, resulting in a stronger anchoring effect. One hundred four subjects were randomly assigned to an experimental group that answered anchoring tasks immediately after being awakened at nighttime or a control group that answered anchoring tasks at daytime. Our findings replicated the well-established anchoring effect in that higher anchors led participants to higher estimates than lower anchors. We did not find significant effects of sleep inertia. While the sleep inertia group reported greater sleepiness and having invested less cognitive effort compared to the control group, no systematic anchoring differences emerged, and cognitive effort did not qualify as a mediator of the anchoring effect. Bayesian analyses provide empirical evidence for these null findings. Implications for the anchoring literature and future research are discussed.

Tipping points ahead? How laypeople respond to linear versus nonlinear climate change predictions.

We investigate whether communication strategies that portray climate change as a nonlinear phenomenon provoke increases in laypeople's climate change risk perceptions. In a high-powered, preregistered online experiment, participants were exposed to linear or nonlinear predictions of future temperature increases that would be expected if global greenhouse gas emissions were not reduced. We hypothesized that the type of climate change portrayal would impact perceptions of qualitative risk characteristics (catastrophic potential, controllability of consequences) which would, in turn, affect laypeople's holistic risk perceptions. The results of the study indicate that the type of climate change portrayal did not affect perceptions of risk or other social-cognitive variables such as efficacy beliefs. While participants who were exposed to a nonlinear portrayal of climate change perceived abrupt changes in the climate system as more likely, they did not perceive the consequences of climate change as less controllable or more catastrophic. Notably, however, participants who had been exposed to a linear or nonlinear portrayal of climate change were willing to donate more money to environmental organizations than participants who had not been presented with a climate-related message. Limitations of the present study and directions for future research are discussed.

The Power and Peril of Precise vs. Round Health Message Interventions to Increase Stair Use.

Taking the stairs vs. an elevator generate benefits for the individual by increasing overall physical activity, health, and wellbeing. In the present paper, we report two pre-registered field intervention studies that examine how health message interventions can motivate individuals to change their behavior. We empirically contrasted opposing predictions from the literature as to whether numerically round (60.00%) or precise (61.87%) health messages are more effective in causing people to use the stairs over taking the elevator. Both interventions were compared to a control condition (no-health message). Contrary to our hypotheses and extant findings, both intervention studies did not produce a significant positive effect of the interventions relative to the control condition. In recent years such null findings have received increasingly more appreciation, particularly in the light of evident downsides of file-drawered studies. We discuss a number of moderating factors that may determine when and why nudging interventions are (in-) effective (e.g., a priori behavioral prevalence, pre-established habits, ceiling effects, and building infrastructure), as well as limitations and avenues for future research.

Open to offers, but resisting requests: How the framing of anchors affects motivation and negotiated outcomes.

Abundant research has established that first proposals can anchor negotiations and lead to a first-mover advantage. The current research developed and tested a motivated anchor adjustment hypothesis that integrates the literatures on framing and anchoring and highlights how anchoring in negotiations differs in significant ways from standard decision-making contexts. Our research begins with the premise that first proposals can be framed as either an offer of resources (e.g., I am offering my A for your B) that highlights gains versus a request for resources (e.g., I am requesting your B for my A) that highlights losses to a responder. We propose that this framing would affect the concession aversion of responders and ultimately the negotiated outcomes. We predicted that when a first proposal is framed as an offer, the well-documented anchoring and first-mover advantage effect would emerge because offers do not create high levels of concession aversion. In contrast, because requests highlight what the responder has to give up, we predicted that opening requests would produce concession aversion and eliminate and even reverse the first-mover advantage. Across 5 experiments, the classic first-mover advantage in negotiations was moderated by the framing of proposals because anchor framing affected concession aversion. The studies highlight how motivational forces (i.e., concession aversion) play an important role in producing anchoring effects, which has been predominantly viewed through a purely cognitive lens. Overall, the findings highlight when and how motivational processes play a key role in both judgmental heuristics and mixed-motive decision-making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

How and Why Different Forms of Expertise Moderate Anchor Precision in Price Decisions.

Increasing price precision leads to linearly stronger anchoring effects for amateurs, but highly precise anchors can backfire for experts. Previous research focused on experts bargaining about an object within their expertise domain (e.g., real-estate agents negotiated about a house listed at €978,781.63). This leaves unknown whether too much precision backfires for experts because of their (a) general negotiation expertise, (b) domain-specific pricing knowledge, or (c) the combination of general expertise and price-knowledge. Our pre-registered report seeks to replicate the too-much-precision effect and to experimentally separate general negotiation expertise from domain-specific price-knowledge. Seasoned experts (real-estate agents) negotiate about an object either within (house) or outside (motor yacht) their domain of expertise. We measure experts' willingness to pay (WTP), counteroffer, self-ascribed versus other-ascribed competence, and their self-ascribed versus other-ascribed price-knowledge. Based on responses of 400 professional real-estate agents, we replicate the advantageous anchor precision effect and illustrate that too much precision backfires regardless of whether agents negotiate within (house) or outside (yacht) their domain of expertise. Mediation analysis suggests that, consistent with previous research, the impact of precise anchors is due to the competence attributed to the negotiation opponent. Our results offer insights into the psychological mechanisms and theoretical understanding of anchor precision.

Precious Property or Magnificent Money? How Money Salience but Not Temperature Priming Affects First-Offer Anchors in Economic Transactions.

The present study aims for a better understanding of how individuals' behavior in monetary price negotiations differs from their behavior in bartering situations. Two contrasting hypotheses were derived from endowment theory and current negotiation research to examine whether negotiators are more susceptible to anchoring in price negotiations versus in bartering transactions. In addition, past research found that cues of coldness enhance cognitive control and reduce anchoring effects. We attempted to replicate these coldness findings for price anchors in a distributive negotiations scenario and to illuminate the potential interplay of coldness priming with a price versus bartering manipulation. Participants (N = 219) were recruited for a 2 × 2 between-subjects negotiation experiment manipulating (1) monetary focus and (2) temperature priming. Our data show a higher anchoring susceptibility in price negotiations than in bartering transactions. Despite a successful priming manipulation check, coldness priming did not affect participants' anchoring susceptibility (nor interact with the price/bartering manipulation). Our findings improve our theoretical understanding of how the focus on negotiation resources frames economic transactions as either unidirectional or bidirectional, and how this focus shapes parties' susceptibility to the anchoring bias and negotiation behavior. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Using Self-regulation to Successfully Overcome the Negotiation Disadvantage of Low Power.

A plethora of studies has demonstrated that low-power negotiators attain lower outcomes compared to high-power negotiators. We argue that this low-power disadvantage can be conceptualized as impaired goal attainment and that self-regulation can help to overcome it. Three experiments tested this assertion. In Study 1, low-power negotiators attained lower profits compared to their high-power opponents in a face-to-face negotiation. Negotiators who set themselves goals and those who additionally formed if-then plans prior to the negotiation overcame the low-power disadvantage. Studies 2 and 3 replicated these effects in computer-mediated negotiations: Low-power negotiators conceded more than high-power negotiators. Again, setting goals and forming additional if-then plans helped to counter the power disadvantage. Process analyses revealed that negotiators' concession-making at the start of the negotiation mediated both the low-power disadvantage and the beneficial effects of self-regulation. The present findings show how the low-power disadvantage unfolds in negotiations and how self-regulatory techniques can help to overcome it.