Power, propensity to negotiate, and moving first in competitive interactions. (2007)

“…high-power individuals displayed a greater propensity to initiate a negotiation than did low-power individuals… power increased the likelihood of making the first move in a variety of competitive interactions.

Magee, J.C., New York University
Galinsky, A.D., Northwestern University
Gruenfeld, D.H., Stanford University

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33: 200-212.

Five experiments investigated how possessing and experiencing power affects the initiation of competitive interaction.

In Experiments 1a and 1b, high-power individuals displayed a greater propensity to initiate a negotiation than did low-power individuals.

Three additional experiments showed that power increased the likelihood of making the first move in a variety of competitive interactions.

In Experiment 2, participants who were semantically primed with power were nearly four times as likely as participants in a control condition to choose to make the opening arguments in a debate competition scenario. In Experiment 3, negotiators with strong alternatives to a negotiation were more than three times as likely to spontaneously express an intention to make the first offer compared to participants who lacked any alternatives. Experiment 4 showed that high-power negotiators were more likely than low-power negotiators to actually make the first offer and that making the first offer produced a bargaining advantage.

Access the full paper here: Power, propensity to negotiate, and moving first in competitive interactions.