Trips and tips for negotiation self-defense: Forewarned is forearmed

Continued attention in both the popular and academic press regarding negotiation and the related concepts of influence and persuasion is nothing short of astonishing. The topics on which we focus in this article, however, are rarely—if ever—vetted in such outlets. We venture, with some measure of caution, into the dark side of negotiation: those tactics that may be duplicitous, unethical, and unprincipled. Such tactics provide a quintessential moral hazard, as they are both brutally effective and rarely illegal. It is not our intent to provide a treatise on unsuitable behavior. Rather, our objective is to establish that no one need be victimized by such behaviors, as all of these tactics are avoidable. It is in this spirit that we provide some guidelines on self-defense in a negotiation context to avert and attenuate the consequences of these behaviors.