Strategic decision-making, negotiation ability and beliefs about malleability

Abstract: The “2/3 Beauty-contest” game is widely used to measure peoples strategic ability, but are quite abstract and numerical (Camerer, 2003). Based on research from Sternberg one may believe that people’s strategic ability will show better in a less abstract situation (Sternberg, 2004). A new game is invented to represent a more intuitive situation that will be compared to the beauty-contest game. We examined the correlation between the participant’s strategic ability and their negotiation ability and in experiments we tried to manipulate the participant’s beliefs about negotiation ability. As predicted, the participant’s strategic ability showed better off in the new and more intuitive decision-situation. The manipulating element in the experiment seems to have had an effect on the participant’s beliefs about negotiation. The two decision situations were together able to predict compatible negotiation ability. The results are discussed in relation to other similar research (Kray & Haselhuhn, 2007).