A concession is valued less as soon as it is known to come from an adversary.
Ross and Stillinger's finding: the identical arms-reduction proposal was rated worse when attributed to the Soviets than to the Americans. It is why third-party mediation and blind evaluation exist.
In practice
- A proposal rejected in March is adopted in September, when a new director tables the same document under a different cover.
- A concession offered by the union is read by management as a trap, and the same terms proposed by a mediator are accepted.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors