N05: Perception, Cognition, and Communication

Not everyone realizes how the role of perception, cognition, and emotion has an influence on negotiation process. Perception and cognition are the basic building blocks of all social encounters, including negotiation, in the sense of that our social actions are guided by the way we perceive and analyze the other party, the situation, and our own interests and position.

The perception of negotiators is very important which could influence on their ability to interpret with accuracy what the other party is saying and meaning. Therefore, negotiators need to understand how information is perceived, filtered, distorted and framed, so that they can prepare themselves when dealing with those information as well as processing it more readily. The ‘framing’ idea is influential in negotiation because it’s about focusing, shaping and organizing the world around us.

Cognitive biases are errors when negotiators have during information process and tend to block negotiators performance. To handle wisely with misconception and cognitive biases, negotiators need to first be aware that these negative aspects which can possibly come up anytime. Furthermore, parties need to carefully develop discussion of the issues and preferences to help reduce the effects of perceptual biases.