You're Robbing Yourself With Poor Haggling

What, if any, are the important questions that you feel this study doesn't answer that need to be addressed in further studies?

We studied the question in a controlled setting -- negotiation exercises with MBAs and executives in a classroom setting where we knew the "truth" about each side's limit. It would be interesting to study it in the field. We are confident that what we've does match the real world.

When we have asked executive education students (midlevel managers) to report on their most recent car and house purchases, we find the same pattern that we see in the studies: They all think that they've claimed 70% or more of the surplus available in the deal. This number matches perfectly with what we observe in our own controlled studies.

So there's a slim chance that they are as good as they say, but we think the parsimonious answer is that they are as susceptible to the bias in real life as our other students are in the controlled exercises we use in class.

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