| People are prone to an illusion of transparency---a belief that their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are more apparent to others than is actually the case. The illusion of transparency is a bias that has been identified in the domains of public speaking, lie detection, and most recently negotiation. In negotiation, accurate perception of the other party's preferences is critical for reaching integrative agreement. I propose in this research that accurate assessment of how the other party perceives our own preferences is equally as important in an integrative bargaining context. Across three studies, I examine the illusion of transparency across negotiators' preferences, the impact of this social perception bias on negotiated outcomes, and the influence of culture on the experience of the bias. I find that the greater negotiators' illusions of transparency, the worse their individual outcomes. Furthermore, the illusion of transparency appears to be a pan-cultural bias, although negotiators from different cultures experience the bias for different reasons. |
