Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

something wonderful behind for his kids, he said, he did the
voice for a cut-rate fee of $75,000, far below his usual $8
million payday. But then something happened: the movie
became a huge hit, raking in $504 million.
And Williams went ballistic.
Now look at this with the Ultimatum Game in mind.
Williams wasn’t angry because of the money; it was the
perceived unfairness that pissed him off. He didn’t complain
about his contract until Aladdin became a blockbuster, and
then he and his agent went loud and long about how they
got ripped off.
Lucky for Williams, Disney wanted to keep its star
happy. After initially pointing out the obvious—that he’d
happily signed the deal—Disney made the dramatic gesture
of sending the star a Picasso painting worth a reported $1
million.
The nation of Iran was not so lucky.
In recent years, Iran has put up with sanctions that have
cost it well over $100 billion in foreign investment and oil
revenue in order to defend a uranium-enriching nuclear
program that can only meet 2 percent of its energy needs. In
other words, like the students who won’t take a free $1
because the offer seems insulting, Iran has screwed itself out
of its chief source of income—oil and gas revenue—in order
to pursue an energy project with little expected payoff.
Why? Again, fairness.
For Iran, it’s not fair that the global powers—which
together have several thousand nuclear weapons—should be