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The personalities and negotiating behaviors of samples of Japanese and American managers are compared in this paper. The Japanese managers were found to be more risk-avoiding, more suspicious, and more oriented towards belief in external or environmental control. In negotiations in a standardized bilateral monopoly context, the Japanese buyers and sellers approached equal profits while the American buyers and sellers moved less towards such an equalization. The most striking differences occurred among those managers bargaining in a reactive (or responding) position versus an initiatory one. Here, the Americans consistently reacted more competitively than the Japanese (that is, they yielded less to their opponents). The Americans reached agreement more quickly, but used more bids to do so. These differences are interpreted within a framework of stereotypical Japanese-American attitudes and behaviors. Speculations also are drawn for Japanese managerial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]