We negotiate daily with employers, coworkers, merchants, friends, romantic partners, children, and more. The outcomes of these negotiations affect the prices we pay, the salaries we earn, where our next vacation will be, and whether our children will finish their vegetables. In a review of the literature, we identify emerging trends in negotiation scholarship that embrace complexity, such as research that finds moderators of effects that were initially described as monolithic, examines the nuances of social interaction, and approaches negotiation as it occurs in the real world.
All told the negotiation literature has produced many important and practical insights, and the existing research highlights negotiation as an exciting context for examining human behavior, characterized by features such as strong emotions, an intriguing blend of cooperation and competition, the presence of fundamental issues such as power and group identity, and outcomes that deeply affect the trajectory of people’s personal and professional lives. Finally, of particular interest is the potential crosstalk between negotiation research and emerging research on conversation, which is something that I am actively pursuing.