Day in a Life of Ruoshan - A Negotiation and Influence Perspective - Marcus Lew, Malaika Khan, Ruoshan Zhang

Short film synopsis:

Join Ruoshan Zhang in navigating a day in her life! Today, Ruoshan seems to have a lot of hurdles awaiting for her. From having to plan the timeline for her vacation with a friend, managing her immense workload regarding her dissertation, and finally, going out into the open to recruit some participants for some very much needed data!

Fortunately for Ruoshan, who happened to study "Negotiation and Influence" from Professor Thomas Hills, she has learnt several negotiation and influence techniques and may just make it out of the day alive!

Video below:

Contents of the video:

The video applies three core topics to daily life events with subtopics littered between. Here are the topics broken down per section.

Section 1: Vacation Planning
Inspiration for section 1: Lecture 2 - Negotiation Basics, Lecture 3 - Tactics, Lecture 4 - Creating Value

BATNA and ZOPA (Sebenius, 2007):

Marcus	Ruoshan
Preference: March 13, 2025	Preference: March 16, 2025
Marcus prefers to depart on March 13th, due to the fact that he must come back and rehearse for an important presentation on 18th at work, the two must negotiate to reach an agreed date to travel.	Ruoshan must submit an assignment by March 15th, so she wants to travel after the submission date, the 16th.
BATNA: Cancel the trip because he is scared to travel alone, and mainly wants to spend time with Ruoshan, so no point in travelling if she can’t go. Also needs to prioritize the important presentation.	BATNA: Travel alone to Bulgaria because she is experienced with solo travelling.
ZOPA: they need to find a time that allows Ruoshan to finish data collection on time and also ensures that Marcus has enough time to prepare and attend the business meeting on time. Given the constraints of these two requirements, it is difficult to decide on a ZOPA. They must work together to generate an integrative solution.

Integrative Value Creation (Kersten, 2001):

From Ruoshan’s perspective, knowing about how Marcus values things will help Ruoshan expand the pie and find integrative solution for both parties.

This is also supported by the 2nd rule of Negotiation: know how they value things (offensive)

• By interacting with Marcus, Ruoshan knows that he is really stressed out about doing well on his important business presentation.
• Ruoshan also knows that Marcus does not want to travel alone to Bulgaria because he is inexperienced with travelling and wants to spend quality time with Ruoshan
• By knowing this, Ruoshan is in a better position to give Marcus what he wants, and and get what Ruoshan wants in return.

3rd rule: seek to expand the pie – best to use integrative negotiation?

• Get Multiple issues on the table so you can trade
• Is there an alternative option that would be suitable for both parties?
• Can Ruoshan’s assignment be done before the submission date?
• Can Marcus possibly ask his manager to change the meeting to online? Possibly not, there is a strict assignment deadline for her dissertation
• Can Marcus possibly ask his manager to change the meeting to online and prepare during this trip? 
• Yes, in fact, it is better that he changes his meeting to be online and travels after the 16th because now it means that he can practice with someone AND spend quality time with Ruoshan

Pareto Optimal Solution (Ehtamo, H., & Hämäläinen, 2001):

• Eventually, Marcus and Ruoshan realised that they could reach the Pareto Optimal solution by changing Marcus’s meeting to be online and using integrative negotiation.
• This will ensure that they have enough time to spend in Bulgaria while ensuring that Marcus is able to attend his important client meeting, well prepared. This will also mean that they can wait for Ruoshan to collect her dissertation data.
• Thus, the values are created satisfying both parties’ needs.

Section 2: Workload Planning

Inspiration for Section 2: Lecture 8 - Behaviour Change, Implementation Intentions

Implementation Intentions (Gollwitzer & Sheeren, 2006): 
Trenz and Keith (2024) studied the use of implementation intentions in the workplace to form new work habits aimed at increasing work outcomes. The researchers distributed initial surveys to identify the work-related habits participants wanted to implement. Over two weeks, participants completed two daily surveys (morning and evening) to assess their use of implementation intentions and the progress of their habit development. A follow up study two-weeks post-experiment was conducted to identify long-term effects. Participants were divided into two groups: one group received an intervention on the correct use of implementation intentions, while the other did not. The group that received interventions showed greater progress and maintained the habits for longer. Overall, the findings indicated that implementation intentions can be used in everyday work to establish habits that increase employee efficiency. 

Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991): 

• Attitude: 
  The individual must perceive recruiting participants before leaving as beneficial; positive attitudes can be strengthened by recognising the advantages of early recruitment (ensuring enough participants, reducing stress before the holiday). Negative attitudes (e.g., fear of bothering people in the group chat) could weaken the intention.

• Subjective Norms: 
  If they receive support from friends and a partner, they may feel more motivated. If others in the group chat have previously responded positively to similar recruitment messages, this could reinforce the intention. However, if they think there won’t be much engagement, they may hesitate.

• Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC): 
  High PBC (e.g., having easy access to the group chat and confidence in writing the message) will make the individual more likely to follow through. Low PBC (e.g., uncertainty about the wording, fear of rejection or lack of time) could act as a barrier. To strengthen the PBC, the person should prepare the message in advance or remind themselves that sending a message is a low-effort action with potentially high rewards.

Section 3: Participant Recruitment

Inspiration of this section: Lecture 1: Asking, Cialdini's Principles of Influence

Cialdini's Principle - Liking (Cialdini, 2001):

The principle "Liking" simply means that if the proposer is well-liked by the other party, the proposer will more easily achieve their goals during the interaction. Ruoshan establishes rapport between her and the counterpart by being friendly and asking about their situation. 

• Similarity Effect (Collison & Howell, 2014):
  The similarity effect can be associated with Cialdini's Principle - Liking. This is where an individual finds similar features or experiences between themselves and a different individual, enhancing the two's favourability. In this video, Ruoshan demonstrates the technique to increase the chances of the counterpart liking Ruoshan and getting more participants.

Cialdini's Principle - Reciprocity (Cialdini, 2001):

As the video mentions, reciprocity is the idea of mutual exchange between parties. The expectation that if one helps another, the other must do so in the future. Cialdini describes this mutual exchange as an essential principle of influence and the essence of social civilisation.

Cialdini's Principle - Commitment and Consistency (Cialdini, 2001):

Cialdini suggests that once people make a commitment, they are more likely to act consistently with that commitment, even if it's not in their best interest. Ruoshan uses commitment and consistency to ensure that the participants who agreed to participate in her experiment keep their promise and complete it.  

• Foot-in-the-Door Technique (Beaman et al., 1983):
  As a follow-up, Ruoshan explicitly asked the participant to confirm with Ruoshan that they had completed her task. This results in the potential participant saying yes twice, making the commitment heavier for the test taker. This demonstrates a synergistic value between the Foot-in-the-Door technique and the principle of commitment and consistency, where the former occurs after their initial commitment.

Cialdini's Principle - Social Proof (Cialdini, 2001):

The idea is that people are influenced by the actions and opinions of others, especially when uncertain, using this as a shortcut for decision-making. Ruoshan uses this idea to frame her message to other psychology students when collecting her data.  

Reference - Full List:

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-t 

Beaman, A. L., Cole, C. M., Preston, M., Klentz, B., & Steblay, N. M. (1983). Fifteen Years of Foot-in-the Door Research: A Meta-Analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9(2), 181-196. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167283092002 (Original work published 1983)

Cialdini, R. B. (2001). Influence: Science and practice. Pearson Education. 

Collisson, B., & Howell, J. L. (2014). The liking-similarity effect: Perceptions of similarity as a function of liking. The Journal of social psychology, 154(5), 384-400.

Ehtamo, H., & Hämäläinen, R. P. (2001). Interactive multiple‐criteria methods for reaching Pareto optimal agreements in negotiations. Group Decision and Negotiation, 10, 475-491.

Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta‐analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 69–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0065-2601(06)38002-1 

Kersten, G. E. (2001). Modeling distributive and integrative negotiations. Review and revised characterization. Group Decision and Negotiation, 10, 493-514.

Molm, L. D. (2010). The structure of reciprocity. Social psychology quarterly, 73(2), 119-131.

Sebenius, J. K. (2017). BATNAs in negotiation: Common errors and three kinds of “no”. Negotiation Journal, 33(2), 89-99.

Trenz, N., & Keith, N. (2024). Promoting new habits at work through implementation intentions. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 97(4), 1813–1834. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12540