The Effects of Abstraction on Integrative Agreements: When Seeing the Forest Helps Avoid Getting Tangled in the Trees.

The present research suggests that negotiators who represented negotiation issues more abstractly were more likely to reach integrative agreements. Specifically, participants who were prompted to directly think about their negotiation issues in a more abstract manner by generating general descriptions of the issues rather than more concretely about the negotiation issues by generating specific descriptions of the issues made more multi-issue offers and achieved higher joint gain from the negotiation. The role of abstraction in negotiation and conflict resolution is discussed.