Using final deadlines strategically in negotiation

Many practitioner-oriented negotiation texts advise negotiators who are under time pressure to keep their final deadlines secret, especially if they are in a weak position. While this advice is consistent with intuition, recent research on the effects of revealing deadlines in negotiation has proven it to be incorrect. This is a useful lesson for students of negotiation, who often find themselves under time pressure at the bargaining table. The article discusses ways in which this lesson can be successfully taught in the classroom. In doing so, the present work reviews prior studies that investigated the effects of revealing final deadlines on negotiation outcomes and explains why negotiators mistakenly believe they ought to keep their deadlines secret.