No way out or swallow the bait of two-sided exit options in negotiation: the influence of social motives and interpersonal trust

In two negotiation experiments with business students we examined effects of the two-sided availability of alternative negotiators in combination with the parties’ social motive. Contrary to our expectation, prosocial negotiators rather than egoistic negotiators were sensitive to the presence of alternative partners. While egoistic negotiators were relatively unaffected by mutual exit options, prosocials engaged in less problem solving and reached lower joint outcomes when having two-sided instead of no exit options. Low interpersonal trust was identified as being responsible for these effects. These findings add to theory and practice on alternatives and social motives in negotiation.