Angry negotiators get a better deal.

Gaming emotions can have financial consequences.

Deflating or inflating one's emotions can be a winning strategy. This finding was presented in "Gaming Emotions in Social Interactions," the lead article in the December 2009 issue of The Journal of Consumer Research. The research on which this conclusion is based was conducted by Professor Teck-Hua Ho, marketing group chair at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, with Eduardo Andrade, an assistant marketing professor.

Professor Ho cites an example of using a strategy of gaming emotions to achieve a desired outcome in a negotiation. When his wife expressed her "love" for a particular painting and wanted to buy it, Ho advised her not to appear excited, but to disguise her emotions in front of the salesperson. After an hour or so, Ho walked out of the store with the $380 painting, having paid only $120 for it.

Ho and Andrade hypothesized, first, that people strategically would display anger when given the opportunity to do so, and second, that the strategy actually might increase the angry person's payoff in the negotiation. "To do so, we created a paradigm that allowed us to precisely measure the gap, if any, between real and expressed emotions, as well as to test the actual financial consequences of the 'emotion gaming' strategy," says Ho.

In the Haas School's social science laboratory, the researchers divided subjects into random groups: the proposers and the receivers. One proposer and one receiver were paired as partners, but they remained anonymous to each other during the games.

The Games Played

They began with a "dictator game." Ho and Andrade gave each proposer $10 and instructed him or her to divide the money with the partner. Both players knew the receiver had to accept any offer. All proposers chose to keep a larger share of the pie. Receivers then were asked to report their current level of anger on a 101-point scale. On average, receivers reported a relatively mild level of anger.

Next the researchers launched the "ultimatum game," in which the same players were paired together. Again, the proposer decided how to divide the pot. This time, the receiver could either accept or decline the offer. If he or she said, "no deal," neither proposer nor receiver would receive any portion of the $10. Most importantly, just before the proposer sent the offer, the researchers told the receiver to report (again) his or her current level of anger. The researchers...