A person-centered account of negotiation: Individual differences and intrapersonal processes

This dissertation advances a person-centered understanding of negotiation by integrating evidence across three intrapersonal levels: stable individual differences, dynamic within-person decision processes, and developable social capacities. Paper 1 provides a comprehensive comparison of individual differences in predicting negotiation success and derives an integrative latent model of negotiator characteristics, showing that a limited set of higher-order factors jointly predicts distinct negotiation outcomes. Paper 2 isolates intrapersonal concession dynamics in controlled multi-round negotiations and demonstrates that negotiators’ own prior concessions can systematically shape subsequent concessions, consistent with loss-aversion and sunk-cost mechanisms, with meaningful heterogeneity across negotiators. Paper 3 introduces and tests a framework for social-skill acquisition in immersive virtual reality, showing that digitally mediated training can efficiently strengthen key capacities such as self-efficacy and anxiety regulation. Synthesizing these findings, the dissertation proposes a coherent framework in which traits, capacities, and processes interact within the negotiation setting to shape behavior and multiple outcomes. Overall, the work clarifies who negotiates successfully, how intrapersonal mechanisms steer bargaining trajectories, and how relevant capacities can be developed.