You're Robbing Yourself With Poor Haggling

So you believe you are a superior negotiator? A new study says you're probably wrong.

When you think that you have bargained for the best deal possible, chances are that you could have done even better, according to the study by professors Richard Larrick of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and George Wu of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. The results were recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

By studying the way students at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business negotiated when buying and selling, the professors found that both the buyers and the sellers believed that they did better and that they received much more of a concession from their opponents than they had given up. They believed that they had captured between 56% and 72% of the monetary value available, they really had only captured 50% of what was available. ...