To move or to wait? Everything you need to know about making the first offer

Most people believe that negotiators should avoid making the first offer. Yet, decades of research have documented the first-offer effect, wherein the person who moves first achieves a better outcome than the person who moves second. This gap between lay beliefs and research evidence may stem, in part, from the fact that studies on the first-offer effect are scattered across numerous scientific articles and journals. In hopes of bridging the gap and providing useful guidance to negotiators, this installation of Negotiating Life seeks to synthesize the evidence in one place. Reviewing many of the major articles on the first-offer effect, it concludes that negotiators should generally strive to make the first offer for specific reasons, in specific situations, and in a specific fashion.