The impact of minimum goals and aspirations on judgments of success in negotiations

Experiment 1 examined the impact of minimum goals and aspiration values on feelings of success. Negotiators with low minimum goals felt more successful than did those with higher minimum goals, even though their final settlements were identical. Furthermore, negotiators with low aspirations felt more successful than did negotiators with higher aspirations, even though the final settlement was identical. Experiment 2 examined the relative impact of minimum goals and aspirations and found that aspirations influenced negotiators' perceptions of success more than did minimum goals. Experiment 3 examined how goals affected the demands negotiators made to their opponents. Negotiators with low minimum goals and high aspirations demanded more from their opponents than did negotiators with high minimum goals and low aspirations. In general, aspirations, as compared to minimum goals, exerted a more powerful influence on the demands people made to others in negotiations and how successful they felt about negotiated outcomes.