How to Get to “Yes” With Someone Who Won’t Listen to You |
When resources are limited, people trying to come to agreements may find themselves stuck in “no.”
A new study explores the dynamics of successive negotiations showing how even trusting partnerships can fail.
Share your feelings along the way to stop the disagreement before it spirals out of control.
You and the person you care most about in the world may come to an impasse over a small but seemingly insurmountable dispute. It’s as simple as this. You want to get a cat, and your partner wants to get a dog. There isn’t enough income to get both pets, so the arguments and campaigning are going on at full pace, with the very essence of your relationship starting to come under fire.
When two parties, romantic or not, are embroiled in such a conflict, what can be done to move to a resolution? According to new negotiation research, the answer may be much simpler than anyone realizes.
How Trust Can Make All the Difference
According to a new study by Leuphana University Lüneburg’s Caroline Heydenbluth and colleagues (2026), most negotiations between quarreling parties take place in a series of steps. However, previous research on conflict resolution tends to look only at one-shot negotiations. When scarce resources must be shared in the real world, this often occurs in a series of steps rather than in an all-or-none fashion. Unions and bosses rarely sit down at the table for a single attempt at hammering out a new agreement. Negotiations can go on for days, weeks, or months. Just as with the dog vs. cat dispute you’re having, there can be multiple tentative agreements reached that quickly break down for seemingly no reason at all. Someone just changes their mind, and the deal is off.
In successive negotiations........