been previously instructed to bargain with the subject in one of three
ways. With some of the subjects, the opponent made an extreme first
demand, assigning virtually all of the money to himself, and stubbornly
persisted in that demand throughout the negotiations. With another
group of subjects, the opponent began with a demand that was moder-
ately favorable to himself; he, too, steadfastly refused to move from
that position during the negotiations. With a third group, the opponent
began with the extreme demand and then gradually retreated to the
more moderate one during the course of the bargaining.
There were three important findings in this experiment that help us
to understand why the rejection-then-retreat technique is so effective.
First, compared to the two other approaches, the strategy of starting
with an extreme demand and then retreating to the more moderate one
produced the most money for the person using it. But this result is not
very surprising in light of the previous evidence we have seen of the
power of larger-then-smaller-request tactics to bring about profitable
agreements. It is the two additional findings of the study that are more
striking.
Responsibility. Those subjects facing the opponent who used the re-
treating strategy felt most responsible for the final deal. Much more
than the subjects who faced a nonchanging negotiation opponent, these
subjects reported that they had successfully influenced the opponent
to take less money for himself. Of course, we know that they hadn’t
done any such thing. The experimenter had instructed their opponent
to retreat gradually from his initial demand no matter what the subjects
did. But it appeared to these subjects that they had made the opponent
change, that they had produced his concessions. The result was that they
felt more responsible for the final outcome of the negotiations. It does
not require much of a leap from this finding to clarify the previous
mystery of why the rejection-then-retreat technique causes its targets
to live up to their agreements with such astounding frequency. The re-
quester’s concession within the technique not only causes targets to say
yes more often, it also causes them to feel more responsible for having
“dictated” the final agreement. Thus the uncanny ability of the rejection-
then-retreat technique to make its targets meet their commitments be-
comes understandable: A person who feels responsible for the terms
of a contract will be more likely to live up to that contract.
Satisfaction. Even though, on the average, they gave the most money
to the opponent who used the concessions strategy, the subjects who
were the targets of this strategy were the most satisfied with the final
arrangement. It appears that an agreement that has been forged through
the concessions of one’s opponent is quite satisfying. With this in mind,
we can begin to explain the second previously puzzling feature of the
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 37