Kennedy on Negotiation by Kennedy Gavin;

Author:Kennedy, Gavin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Prisoner's Dilemma Games

Having raised some doubts, I hope, as to the practicality of the psychological styles approach, it is now time to 'put up or shut up', as my betting friends put it. If we are to abandon a 'scientific' contribution to negotiating practice we must put something better in its place. That is what I shall now do.

To do this most effectively, however, it is best to do it through interactive exercises, which is precisely what negotiators do in our workshops. They play the 'red-blue' game. This might seem a long way from the modestly simple game played at Rand in the 1950s, an institution dedicated to research for 'the public welfare and security of the United States', to the training of negotiators almost 50 years later. It so happens, without exaggeration, that it is the most important journey you can make towards your understanding of negotiation behaviour. Therefore, your effort will be well worth your while.

But it is not possible to play an interactive game on your own, so I shall have take you through an alternative route to achieve the same outcome. To assist your quest, I shall cut your journey time considerably by making a diversion. Initially you may find it perplexing but stick with it, because from this diversion you go right to the heart of negotiating behaviour.

The Rand researchers playing the dilemma game discovered something that has intrigued the social (and other) scientists ever since.184 But, unlike the higher sciences of psychological profiling, you do not need a PhD to play dilemma games. Indeed, in over ten years' experience of thousands of participants playing our dilemma games, less than a handful have had trouble with it.

So let us try a mind game, beginning with the original game, known the world over as the 'prisoner's dilemma'. The original games were about two prisoners and a prosecutor who does not have enough evidence to convict them of the serious crime which he has reason to believe they have committed. The scripts for prisoner's dilemma games vary quantitatively but the essence of them all is the same.185 The one I use is:

Two prisoners are kept in separate cells with no means of communicating. The prosecutor offers the same deal to each prisoner: "If you confess to the crime you will be released after testifying against your partner, who will receive a ten-year sentence; if you don't confess but your partner does, you will receive ten years and your partner will be released. However, if you both confess, you will both be sentenced to five years and if neither of you confesses you will get one year each on the lesser charge we are holding you on.'

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