Recognize reactive devaluation in yourself and your counterpart

An offer you would accept from a neutral party may feel unacceptable simply because your adversary made it — know this bias by name.

Why it works

Reactive devaluation is an attribution-based bias: when a counterpart proposes something, the proposal is assumed to serve their interests, which triggers suspicion about its value to you. This is automatic — people rate identical proposals lower when they believe the adversary generated them. It kills integrative deals: a good joint-gain proposal from the counterpart is discounted before it is evaluated on its merits.

How to do it

1. When evaluating a counterpart’s proposal, explicitly ask: would I accept this exact proposal if a neutral party had made it?
2. Separate evaluation from attribution: what does this proposal actually give me, independent of who suggested it?
3. Name the bias openly in high-trust negotiations: "I want to make sure I’m not discounting this just because you brought it up."

Evidence

Reactive devaluation has been demonstrated experimentally: participants systematically rated a proposal lower when attributed to their adversary than when attributed to a neutral mediator, even when the content was identical. (observational)

Reactive devaluation is strongest in adversarial or politically charged contexts and weaker in cooperative ones. The bias is not universal.

Sources

• Ross & Stillinger (1991), "Barriers to conflict resolution", Negotiation Journal

Common mistake

Rejecting a proposal from your counterpart that you would have been pleased to have proposed yourself — and then spending sessions trying to reach a worse version of the same deal.