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Two studies of bilateral negotiation are reported. Both were designed to reveal the conditions under which bargainers reach agreement involving high joint profit. The results suggest the importance of three approaches to negotiation: (a) the distributive approach, which reduces joint profit; (b) the heuristic trial-and-error approach, which enhances joint profit; and (c) the information-exchange approach, which enhances joint profit when adopted by bargainers with high cognitive complexity. Bargainers who start with a problem-solving orientation tend to adopt one of the latter two approaches. The most integrative solutions appear to be developed by dyads whose members have this orientation together with high and somewhat inflexible limits or levels of aspiration.The research reported here was concerned with the processes and conditions that lead to the development of more integrative agreements in bilateral negotiation. An agreement is said to be more "integrative" the greater its joint utility, that is, the more valuable it is to the two bargainers taken together. The term derives historically from Follett's (1940) notion of "integration," which she viewed as the creative process by which bargainers discover new options that are better for both parties than those currently under consideration. Such options can be thought of as integrating the needs of the two bargainers. Follett contrasted integration with "compromise" in which agreement is reached on an obvious option by a series of mutual concessions.

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Four basic negotiating strategies are analyzed along with the outcomes they encourage and the determinants of their use. Guidelines for influencing the strategic choice of one's bargaining partners are also presented with an emphasis on techniques for encouraging one's adversaries to move away from contentious behavior and toward problem solving.

The effects of trust (denned as belief that the other negotiator is cooperatively motivated), aspirations, and gender were investigated in a study of the conditions and processes leading to outcomes that jointly benefit bath parties. Under high aspirations, high trust produced self-consciously cooperative behavior, in the form of direct information exchange; low trust produced self-consciously distributive (competitive) behavior and one form of indirect information exchange. A correlational analysis showed that joint benefit was a positive function of a set of trial and error tactics and two forms of indirect information exchange, a negative function of the use of distributive tactics, and unrelated to direct information exchange. Joint benefit was greater under higher aspirations but was not a function of trust or the interaction between trust and aspirations. Results were similar for both genders except that women engaged in less distributive behavior and were less interested in the task, especially under high aspirations. A theory of strategic choice is presented to explain the major experimental findings.Negotiation can be denned as symbolic communication between two or more parties aimed at reaching agreement on an issue where there are initial differences in preference. The present study grew out of a research program on the processes by which two negotiators locate and adopt options that satisfy (i.e., "integrate") their collective needs and hence produce agreements of high joint benefit. This topic has been referred to as "integration" (Follett, 1940) or "integrative bargaining" (Pruitt & Lewis, 1977;Walton & McKersie, 1965).