Persuasion strategies for litigators and negotiators : what’s the difference?

Abstract

Persuasion scholars have documented the use of compliance-gaining messages in both negotiation and negotiation. The extant research offers suggestions for litigators and negotiators, but fails to compare the methods of persuasion in the two circumstances in order to advise attorneys and clients which communication messages to employ in the different contexts. The present study explores differences in use of 7 common compliance-gaining message strategies (“It's Up To You”, “This Is The Way Things Are”, “Equity”, “Benefit (Other)”, “Bargaining”, and “Cooperation”; Kellerman, 2004) in separate negotiation and litigation cases. Findings indicate that “This Is The Way Things Are” messages were more frequent in litigation than negotiation, but “Cooperation” messages were more common in negotiation than litigation. No other significant differences in strategy frequency across the different contexts were found. These results indicate that some differences exist between the messages used in negotiation and litigation and that future research should investigate what other messages may be used differently in the two contexts.