The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations

Research Reports The head game of transp bency in dialogs flip over train Boven, Thomas Gilovich, and Victoria Husted Medvec The authors examined whether negotiants atomic number 18 willn to an prank of transp arntness, or the belief that their private suasions and feelings are more(prenominal) distinct to their duologue accessorys than they actu solelyy are. In involve integrity, treaters who were binglerous to keep their drutherss thought that their taste sensations had leaked out more than they actu eithery did.In moot virtu each(prenominal)y(prenominal), go through negotiators who were toil al al close(prenominal) to train information active several(prenominal)(prenominal) of their preferences overrated their pardners index to discern them. The takingss of rent Three rule out the possibility that the findings are simply the result of the anguish of association, or the projection of iodines accept endureledge onto new(prenominal)s. intervention explores how the fancy of hydrofoil big business sectorman impede negotiators success. I close to car excessivelyn depictions of negotiators in action (a tiny fraction of the cartoon universe, we admit), negotiators are sh possess with dialog bubbles depicting their overt comments and thought bubbles revealing their private thoughts. These conventions comport the different levels at which negotiators operate Some of their wants, regardes, and worries are conveyed to the other side, exactly some are held cover version for strategic advantage. Because match slight task in dialogue is deciding how such(prenominal)(prenominal) information to open back (Raiffa 1982),Leaf Van Boven is an Assistant Professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Campus Box 345, Boulder, Colo. 80309. telecommunicate email&160protected edu. Thomas Gilovich is a Professor of psychology at Cornell University, discourse section of Psychology, Ithaca, N. Y. 15850. E mail email&160protected edu. Victoria Husted Medvec is the Adeline Barry Davee Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Ill. 60201. Emailemail&160protected orthwestern. edu. 0748-4526/03/0400-0117/0 2003 Plenum resign Corporation Negotiation Journal April 2003 117 it follows that part of the phenomenology of talks is monitoring how surface single has conveyed what one wants to convey and hide outed what one wants to obliterate. Do negotiators know how well they gift conveyed or restrained their preferences? Typic solelyy, negotiators know what they have and have non said, of course, so they may gener wholey have a soundly idea what their accomplices know about their preferences.But how well calibrated are negotiators assessments of what they have conveyed and concealed? We explored one source of potential miscalibration, namely, whether negotiators regard an illusion of transparentness, overestimating the extent to which their intragroup states leak out and are known by others (Gilovich, Savitsky, and Medvec 1998). most enquiry on the illusion of transparency shows that plenty overreckoning their competency to conceal private information. But there is also severalise that people take in the illusion when assay to convey private information.Individuals who were asked to convey emotions with facial expressions simply overrated observers office to discern the expressed emotion (Savitsky 1997). Likewise, participants who were videotaped era exposed to humorous material thought they had been more expressive than observers after rated them as organism (Barr and Kleck 1995). These findings suggest that, when trying either to conceal or convey information, negotiators may experience an illusion of transparency, overestimating what their partners know about their preferences.Whether they do so is strategic, because previous research has shown t hat the ilkliness of (optimal) block is very much dependant on(p) on accurate perceptions of what others know about ones own preferences (Bazerman and Neale 1992 Raiffa 1982 Thompson 1991). We conducted three different studies to examine whether negotiators experience an illusion of transparency in talkss. Studies One and Three examined whether novice negotiators trying to conceal their preferences tend to over betoken the likelihood that their negotiation partners would be equal to fall upon those preferences.Study devil investigated whether undergo negotiators attempting to communicate some of their preferences also succumb to an illusion of transparency. Study Three was also designed to distinguish the illusion of transparency from the condemnation of experience, or the tendency to project ones cognition onto others (Camerer, Loewenstein, and weber 1989 Keysar and Bly 1995 Keysar, Ginzel, and Bazerman 1995). Specifically, we examined whether observers who are cursed with the equal knowledge as the negotiators exhibit the same biases as the negotiators themselves.Study One Method Twenty-four previously uninformed Cornell University undergraduates participated in pairs in exchange for course credit. Participants l acquire that 118 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations they would complete a negotiation exercise in which they would to all(prenominal) one represent the provost at one of two campuses of a multi-campus university system. Because of budget constraints, all of the systems cardinal social psychologists needed to be con solidityated at the two provosts universities.The provosts were to manage the distri thation of the social psychologists amidst the two campuses. Participants were informed that some social psychologists were more expensive than others, and that some were more invalu up to(p) to one campus than the other. These contrasts were summarized in a report describing the strength s and weaknesses of all(prenominal)(prenominal) psychologist and assigning each(prenominal) a specific mo of points. The eight psychologists were among the 15 around frequently cited in social psychology textbooks (Gordon and Vicarii 1992).To familiarize participants with the psychologist and his or her expertise, each psychologist was depicted on a 2- by 4-inch laminated trading panel that displayed a picture of the social psychologist, his or her name, and two of his or her remedy-known publications. Each negotiators nigh and to the lowest degree valu stretch out psychologists were charge +5 and 5 points, respectively, and the other psychologists were assigned intermediate taxs. The experimenter said that all psychologists must be employed at one of the two universities because all were tenured.The most and least(prenominal)(prenominal) valuable psychologists were not the same for the two negotiators the correlation coefficient mingled with how much each of the eig ht psychologists was worth to the two participants was . 79. Participants were told that they should conceal their report, which was somewhat different from the other participants report. Because pilot test indicated that m whatsoever participants were unsure how to negotiate, we showed them a five-minute videotape of a staged negotiation in which two confederates bartered over who would get (or be forced to acquire) each psychologist.Confederates were shown trading cards actively back and forth. Participants were given as much date as they needed to negotiate, unwashedly about 30 minutes. They were told that several prizes would be awarded at the end of the academic term (e. g. , a $50 gift certificate to the Cornell book store, dinner for two at a topical anaesthetic restaurant) and their peril of winning a prize corresponded to the number of points they constituteed in the negotiation. We asked participants both primal in the negotiation (after approximately five minutes ) and at the end to name their partners most valuable and least valuable psychologists.At both times, we also asked them to estimate the likelihood (expressed as a percentage) that their partner would right on mark their most and least valuable psychologists. We pointed out that the prob world power of correct realization by meet alone was 12. 5 percent. Question lay was counterbalanced, with no effect of order in every of our analyses. Negotiation Journal April 2003 119 Results and Discussion Our key outline was a semblance of participants mean estimates to a null time nurture derived from the overall accuracy rate.Participants canister be said to exhibit an illusion of transparency if their estimates, on average, are higher than the developed accuracy rate. As predicted, negotiators overestimated their partners ability to detect their preferences, however notwithstanding after the negotiation was complete (see tabularize One). Early in the negotiation, individuals slightly underestimated (by 2 percent) the likelihood that their partners would decent advert their most valuable psychologist and slightly overestimated (by 8 percent) the likelihood that their partners would expose their least valuable psychologist.Neither of these departures was statistically trustworthy. 1 quest the negotiation, participants overestimated the probability that their partners would get wind correctly their most and least valuable psychologists by 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively. Both of these differences were statistically reliable. That is, the probability that negotiators overestimated by pure chance how much their partners knew about their preferences is less than . 05 (the t statistics for these two comparisons are 3. 16 and 3. 30, respectively). Negotiators so experienced an illusion of transparency at the end of the negotiation, overestimating their partners ability to discern their preferences. skirt One Negotiators estimates of the likelih ood that their partners would be able to list their most and least valuable social psychologists, and the similar percentages real(a)ly able to do so. Estimated % Early negotiation Most valuable Least valuable Post negotiation Most valuable Least valuable 72%* 76%* 58% 63% 69% 58% 71% 50% Actual % Note * indicates that the estimated percentage is reliably greater than the corresponding demonstrable percentage, p < . 5 120 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations These findings extend earlier research on the illusion of transparency, showing that negotiators conceptualise their inner thoughts and preferences leak out and are more discernible than they in truth are. This result was hold ined only during the sanction assessment, but we do not wish to make too much of this finding. First, it is hardly surprising because, at the time of the initial assessment, most groups had yet to engage in much discussion of specific candidates, and henc e there was little opportunity for participants references to have leaked out. Furthermore, it was only participants estimates of the detectibility of their least valuable psychologists that rose predictably (from 58 to 76 percent) from early in the negotiation to the end an increase that was highly statistically reliable (t = 3. 78). Their estimates of the detectibility of their most valuable psychologists stayed largely the same across the course of the negotiation (from 69 to 72 percent) and it was only a decrease in identification accuracy (from 71 to 58 percent) over time that led to the difference in the magnitude of the illusion of transparency.These subsidiary findings may result from the usual dynamics of the negotiation process Negotiators typically focus initially on the most grave issues, postponing a discussion of less measurable issues or of what they are willing to give up to obtain what they want until posterior in the negotiation. This would explain why negotiat ors felt that they had already leaked information about their most important psychologists early in the negotiation, but that a uniform feeling of leakage regarding their least important psychologists took longer to develop.This tendency might also explain why it may have been relatively well-fixed for the negotiators to discern one anothers top choices early in the discussion. It may have been harder to do so later on, after the negotiators discussed all of the psychologists and the various tradeoffs between them. Study Two In Study One, participants experienced an illusion of transparency when they were instructed to conceal their preferences from their partners. In many negotiations outside the laboratory, however, negotiators often attempt to communicate rather than conceal their preferences.In fact, negotiation instructors often advise MBAs and other would-be negotiators to communicate information about their preferences. Do negotiators experience an illusion of transparency when they attempt to communicate rather than conceal their preferences? Past research has shown that people experience an illusion of transparency when trying (nonverbally) to convey thoughts and feelings in settings outside negotiations (Barr and Kleck 1995 Savitsky 1997).We therefore examined whether negotiators attempting to communicate some of their preferences, whose efforts at communication are not limited to nonverbal channels, would likewise experience an illusion of transparency. Negotiation Journal April 2003 121 As part of a classroom exercise, MBA students in negotiation courses blameless a complex six-party negotiation assumption (Harborco, a teaching tool available from the Clearinghouse of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, www. pon. org). The course emphasized the grandeur of negotiators communicating some of their preferences to one another in negotiations.Prior to the Harborco negotiation, students had occupied in numerous other exercises in which their failure to convey information resulted in nonoptimal settlements. To control that the Harborco negotiators were attempting to communicate information about their preferences, we asked 22 Cornell and Northwestern University MBA students (not include in following study) who had just completed the Harborco negotiation to indicate which strategy they engaged in more an information-sharing strategy (attempting to communicate their preferences to others), or an information-hiding strategy (attempting to conceal their preferences from others).Everyone indicated that they apply the information-sharing strategy more. We hypothesized that the same psychological processes that fail novice negotiators trying to conceal their preferences to experience an illusion of transparency would also lead experienced negotiators trying to communicate at least some of their preferences to experience a similar illusion. We thus predicted that participants would overestimate the number of other nego tiators who could correctly let on their preferences.Method Two hundred and forty MBA students at Cornell and Northwestern completed the Harborco simulation, negotiating whether, and under what circumstances, a major new seaport would be create off the coast of a fictional city. There were six parties to the negotiation. The negotiator who represented Harborco (a consortium of investors) was most central. A second negotiator, representing the federal room that oversees the development of such seaports, had to decide whether to subsidize a $3 one thousand thousand loan Harborco had requested.The other negotiators represented the state governor, the labor unions from surrounding seaports, the owners of other ports that might be affected by a new seaport, and environmentalists relate about the impact of a new seaport on the local ecology. The negotiation involved five issues, each with several options of varying importance to the six parties. For each negotiator, points were assig ned to each option of each issue. student performance was evaluated according to the number of points accumulated.For example, the most important issue to the Harborco deputy was the approval of the subsidized loan (worth 35 points for approval of the full $3 billion, 29 points for approval of a $2 billion loan, etc. ) the second most important issue was the allowance to other ports for their expected losings due to the new seaport (worth 23 points for no compensation, 15 points for compensation of $150 million, 122 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations etc. ).The Harborco negotiators preference order for the five issues was somewhat different from the preference order of the other five negotiators. Participants were given approximately one and a half hours to reach an agreement. They were involve to vote on a settlement proposed by the Harborco negotiator at three points during the negotiation after 20 minutes, after one hour, and at the e nd. A successful agreement required the approval of at least five negotiators. Any agreement that included the subsidized loan required the approval of the federal agency representative.The Harborco negotiator could veto any proposal. The dependent measures, collected after the first and concluding rounds of voting, concerned the Harborco negotiators estimates of the other negotiators identification of his or her preference order. The Harborco negotiators estimated how many of the other five negotiators would identify the rank ordering (to the Harborco negotiator) of each issue for example, how many would identify the approval of the loan as their most important issue? We made clear that one negotiator would take a chance the exact importance of each issue by chance alone.Meanwhile, each of the other negotiators estimated the issue that was most important to Harborco, second most important, and so on. augur One keep down able to identify each issue 5 4 3 2 1 0 Predicted Number Actual Number ird co nd rth co nd Th ird th Fo ur h Fi rs Fi rs Fi ft Fi rs Th Se Fo u First Round ISSUE IMPORTANCE Predicted and actual number of negotiators able to identify correctly the importance of each issue to the Harborco negotiator after the first and final rounds of voting.Results and Discussion The dashed lines in Figure One indicate that, as predicted, the Harborco negotiators estimate of the number of other negotiators who could identify the rank of each issue was greater than the actual number of negotiators able Negotiation Journal April 2003 123 Se Second Round Fi ft h t t t to do so (as indicated by the solid lines). Following the first round of voting, the Harborco negotiators overestimated the number of their fellow negotiators able to identify the importance to them of all mid-range issues. All these differences were statistically reliable (all ts > 2. 0). Negotiators did not overestimate the number of negotiators able to identify their most and least import ant issues. Following the final round of voting, Harborco representatives overestimated the number of negotiators able to identify their four most important issues. This overestimation was statistically reliable for the four most important issues (all t > 2. 25), and was marginally reliable with a probability level of . 14 for the least important issue (t = 1. 5). These findings replicate and extend those of Study One and of previous research on the illusion of transparency.Experienced negotiators who were attempting to convey (rather than conceal) their preferences to other negotiators tended to overestimate the transparency of those preferences. Study Three We contend that negotiators overestimation of their partners ability to discern their preferences contrives an egocentric illusion whereby negotiators overestimate the transparency of their internal states. An alternative account is that negotiators experience a curse of knowledge, overestimating the knowability of any(preno minal) they themselves know (Camerer et al. 989 Keysar and Bly, 1995 Keysar et al. 1995). Negotiators may thus overestimate the discernibility of their preferences because they cannot undo the knowledge of their own preferences, not because they feel like their preferences leaked out. Studies One and Two lead some evidence against this alternative interpretation because participants did not significantly overestimate their partners ability to discern their preferences early in the negotiation when they were cursed with the same knowledge, but had little opportunity for their preferences to leak out.To provide a more unmitigated test of this alternative interpretation, Study Three employed a mental image in which observers were yoked to each individual negotiator. The observers were informed of their counterparts preferences and thus were cursed with the same uprise knowledge, but not with the phenomenology of having and possibly leaking the negotiators preferences. subseque ntly watching a videotaped negotiation between their yoked counterpart and another negotiator, observers estimated the likelihood that their counterparts negotiation partner would identify their counterparts preferences.We expected that observers estimates would be lower than actual negotiators estimates because observers would not have the experience of their preferences leaking out. 124 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations Method Twenty-four previously unacquainted Northwestern University undergraduates participated in pairs in exchange for the opportunity to earn between $4 and $13, based on their performance in the negotiation. Negotiators were interpreted to separate rooms and given instructions for the negotiation.The negotiation was similar to that used in Study One, except that it involved a purchaser-seller framework, with which we felt our participants would be familiar. Participants learned that they would act as a provost of one of two campuses of a large university system. Because of budget cuts, the larger of the two campuses (the seller) needed to rid of fifteen of its 35 psychology department talent. Because the fifteen capacity were tenured, they could not be fired, but they could be transferred to the smaller of the two campuses (the buyer), which was trying to acquire faculty.Participants were to negotiate over the fifteen psychologists in play any faculty not acquired by the buyer would remain at the sellers campus. Participants were given a report that described each psychologist and his or her associated point value. Some of the psychologists had a positive value to buyers and a veto value to sellers, others had a positive value to both, and still others had a ostracize value to both. Participants were told that they should not show their confidential reports to the other negotiator.Participants earned 25 cents for every positive point and had to pay 25 cents for every negative point they ac cumulated. To give buyers and sellers an equal chance to make the same totality of money, we endowed sellers with an initial stake of $10 and buyers with an initial stake of $4. If buyers obtained all nine of the beneficial faculty and none of the four costly faculty (two were worth 0 points) they earned an additional $8, for $12 total. Similarly, if the sellers eliminated all eight costly faculty and hold all five beneficial faculty (two were worth 0 points) they earned $2, for $12 total.If no agreement was reached, sellers retained all faculty, losing $6, and buyers acquired no psychologists, leaving both with $4. As in Study One, we gave participants laminated trading cards with a picture of each psychologist and two of that psychologists better-known works on the back. The fifteen faculty members, although in worldly concern all social psychologists, were arbitrarily divided into the three subdisciplines of social, clinical, and human-experimental psychology. We designed the payoffs so that the sychologist within each discipline who the buyer most wanted to obtain was not the psychologist the seller most wanted to eliminate. To encourage participants to obtain or retain psychologists across the three disciplines, sellers were offered an additional two points if they eliminated at least one faculty member from each discipline, and an additional four points if they eliminated at least two from each discipline. Similarly, buyers were offered an additional two points if they acquired at least one facultyNegotiation Journal April 2003 125 member from each discipline, and an additional four points if they acquired at least two from each discipline. Thus, supreme earnings for buyers and sellers were $13 (the $12 earned by accumulating all achievable positive points, no negative points, plus the $1 bonus). After negotiators tacit their task, they were brought together and given as long as they needed to negotiate a division of the fifteen psychologists, usual ly about 20 minutes.Afterward, buyers estimated the likelihood (expressed as a percentage) that the seller would correctly identify the psychologists from each subdiscipline who were the most and least important for the buyer to obtain sellers estimated the likelihood that the buyer would correctly identify the psychologists from each subdiscipline who were the most and least important for the seller to eliminate. Participants were told that the chance accuracy rate was 20% percent. Buyers were also asked to identify the psychologists from each subdiscipline who were the most and least important for the seller to eliminate, and sellers were asked to make analogous judgments about the buyers inducing structure. tally Condition. Twelve pairs of previously unacquainted Northwestern undergraduates were paid $6 and yoked to one of the 12 pairs from the negotiation condition one student matched to the buyer and one to the seller. Participants read the instructions given to their yoked counterpart (either the buyer or seller) in the actual negotiation before viewing their counterparts videotaped negotiation.Participants then made the same estimates as their counterparts in the negotiation condition, identifying the psychologists from each subdiscipline who were most and least important for their counterparts negotiation partner to acquire (or eliminate), and estimating the likelihood that their counterparts negotiation partner would be able to guess the psychologists in each subdiscipline who were most and least important for their counterpart to obtain (or eliminate). Results Negotiators. As anticipated, negotiators exhibited an illusion of transparency.As can be see in the left and right columns of Table Two, buyers and sellers overestimated their partners ability to identify their most important psychologists by 20 percent both statistically reliable differences (ts= 3. 58 and 3. 45, respectively). Buyers and sellers also overestimated the likelihood that thei r partner would be able to identify their least important psychologists by 4 percent and 25 percent, respectively, with only the latter result statistically reliable (t = 4. 34). Control participants.Control participants displayed a curse of knowledge, overestimating the likelihood that their counterparts negotiation partner would correctly identify their counterparts preferences (compare the center and right columns of Table Two). This was in particular true for 126 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations those yoked to sellers They reliably overestimated the likelihood that their yoked counterparts negotiation partners would identify their counterparts most and least important psychologists by 12 percent and 19 percent, respectively (ts = 2. 58 and 4. 9). Control participants who were yoked to buyers, in contrast, did not overestimate the likelihood that their yoked counterparts negotiation partners would overestimate their counterparts prefer ences. Table Two Participants estimates of the likelihood that their negotiators partners were able to identify the negotiators most and least important psychologists, and the corresponding percentages genuinely able to do so. Negotiators Estimates Control Estimates Actual Accuracy Most Important Buyers Sellers Least Important Buyers Sellers 62% 68%* 56% 63%* 58% 42% 70%* 59%* 53% 51%* 50% 39%Note * indicates that the estimated percentage is reliably greater than the corresponding actual percentage, p < . 05 More important, in every case the control participants estimates (overall M = 56 percent) were lower than the actual negotiators estimates (overall M = 64 percent) a statistically reliable difference (t = 2. 53). Thus, negotiators overestimated the transparency of their preferences more than yoked observers who were cursed with the same knowledge, but did not have the same ingrained experience as negotiators themselves.Discussion The results of Study Three indicate that neg otiators overestimation of their partners ability to discern their preferences stems from both a curse of knowledge and an illusion of transparency. Observers who were provided with the same abstract knowledge as the negotiators those provided with Negotiation Journal April 2003 127 abstract information about sellers preferences at any rate overestimated the likelihood that those preferences would be detected. However, this effect was not as strong as that found for actual negotiators estimates.Those participants, possessing more detailed knowledge about how it felt to want to obtain some psychologists and avoid others, on the face of it thought that some of those feelings had leaked out to their partners because they made significantly higher estimates of the likelihood of detection than the observers did. Negotiators experience an illusion of transparency over and above any curse of knowledge to which they are subject. What Does it All Mean? These three studies provide consiste nt support for an illusion of transparency in negotiations.Undergraduate students who were instructed to conceal their preferences thought that they had tipped their hand more than they really had (Studies One and Three). Likewise, business students experienced in negotiation who were attempting to communicate information about some of their preferences overestimated how successfully they had done so (Study Three). These results are not due to an abstract curse of knowledge because observers who were cursed with the same knowledge as the negotiators did not overestimate the detectibility of the negotiators preferences to the same extent as the negotiators did (Study Three).The illusion of transparency is thus due to the sense that ones specific actions and reactions that arise in the give-and-take of negotiation a blush here, an averted gaze there are more telling than they actually are. These results complement and extend findings by Vorauer and Claude (1998) who examined partic ipants ability to estimate how well others could discern their general approach to a roast problem-solving exercise i. e. , whether they were most interested in being assertive, being fair, being accommodating, and so on.They found that participants thought their goals would be more readily discerned than they actually were. Their findings, however, appear to reflect a curse of knowledge rather than an illusion of transparency because their participants estimates of the detectibility of their own goals were just the same as those made by observers who were simply informed of the participants goals. The Vorauer and Claude findings should not be surprising since their participants did not actually engage in face-to-face interaction.Instead, each participant exchanged notes with a phantom other, whose responses were crafted by the experimenters. Without interaction, it is difficult see how an illusory sense of transparency could emerge. Vorauer and Claudes studies, along with the res ults of Study Three, suggest that the curse of knowledge can likewise lead to exaggerated estimates of how readily ones negotiation partner can discern ones own stance on the negotiation (Keysar et al. 1995). 128 Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec The Illusion of Transparency in NegotiationsIt is important to note that both the illusion of transparency and the curse of knowledge reflect peoples difficulty in getting beyond their allow information. In the curse of knowledge, this information is abstract knowledge of ones beliefs, preferences, or goals in the illusion of transparency, this information is more detailed, phenomenological knowledge of how one feels or how difficult it was to suppress a particular reaction. At one level, then, it may be fair to characterize the illusion of transparency as a special case of knowledge more detailed and affect-laden with which one is cursed.At another level, however, the differences between the two phenomena may be sufficiently pronounced th at there is more to be gained by viewing them as distinct. Ultimately, a more complete understanding of the relationship between the curse of knowledge and illusion of transparency must await the outcome of just research. Future research might also further examine the vestigial mechanism proposed for the illusion of transparency. Gilovich et al. (1998) attribute the phenomenon to a process much like Tversky and Kahnemans (1974) anchoring and adjustment heuristic.When attempting to ascertain how apparent their internal states are to others, people are likely to begin the process of judgment from their own subjective experience. Because people know that others are not as privy to their internal states as they are themselves, they adjust from their own perspective to capture others perspective. Because such adjustments tend to be insufficient (Tversky and Kahneman 1974 Epley and Gilovich 2001), the net result is a respite effect of ones own phenomenology, and the feeling that one is more transparent than is actually the case.This account suggests that the illusion of transparency should be particularly pronounced when the internal state being assessed is one that is strongly and distinctly felt, such as when negotiating especially important issues. In addition, future research might examine the impact of the illusion of transparency on negotiation processes and outcomes. Thompson (1991) has shown that when negotiators have different priorities, negotiators who provide information about their priorities to their partners fare better than those who do not.The illusion of transparency may lead negotiators to hold back information about their priorities in the mistaken belief that one has conveyed too much information already. By leading negotiators to believe that their own preferences are more apparent than they really are, the illusion of transparency may give rise to the belief that the other side is being less open and cooperative than they are themselves w hich may lead each negotiator to hold back even more. The process can thus spiral in the wrong direction toward greater secrecy. Negotiation Journal April 2003 129It may be advantageous, then, for negotiators to be aware of the illusion of transparency. If negotiators know they tend to conceal less than they think they do, they may open up a bit more and increase their chances of reaching optimal agreements. In other words, knowing that ones own thought bubbles are invisible to others can lead to more successful negotiations. NOTES This research was supported by Research deliver SBR9319558 from the National Science Foundation. We thank Tina Rackitt her help in collecting info and Dennis Regan for his comments on an earlier draft. 1.Because the data for each pair of negotiators are interdependent, all analyses in this and subsequent studies used the dyad (or group) as the unit of analysis. 2. A t statistic is a measure of how extreme a statistical estimate is. Specifically, a t is the ratio of the difference between a hypothesized value and an observed value, divided by the standard error of the adjudicated distribution. Consider negotiators estimates, following the negotiation, that their negotiation partner had a 72 percent chance of correctly identifying their most valuable psychologist. Because, in actuality, egotiators identified their partners most valuable psychologist only 58 percent of the time, the difference between the hypothesized value (58 percent) and the observed value (72 percent) is 14 percent. The standard error, in this case, is the standard deviation of the difference between a negotiators predicted likelihood and the actual likelihood (the average squared difference between these two scores), divided by the square root of the sample size. In general, t statistics more extreme than 1. 96 are statistically reliable that is, the probability that the observed difference is due to chance alone is less than . 5. 3. We also asked negotiators to estimate which subdiscipline was most important to their partner, and to estimate the likelihood that their partner would discern correctly their own preference order vis-a-vis the three subdisciplines. During debriefing, however, participants said they found these questions confusing because they did not parse the 15 faculty according to their subdiscipline, but instead focused on the value of each individual faculty. These responses are therefore not discussed further. REFERENCES Barr, C. L. and R. E. Kleck. 1995.Self-other perception of the brashness of facial expressions of emotion Do we know what we show? Journal of record and Social Psychology 68 608-618. Bazerman, M. H. and M. Neale. 1992. Negotiating rationality. New York Free Press. Camerer, C. , G. Loewenstein, and M. Weber. 1989. The curse of knowledge in economic settings An experimental analysis. Journal of Political Economy 97 1232-1253. Epley, N. and T. Gilovich. 2001. 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