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In a negotiation, silence is a tool

The folk advice says go quiet after you name a price because the awkward pause squeezes the other side into a concession. MIT researchers tested that — and found nothing.

What silence did change was the person using it. Pauses of just 3 seconds or more pushed negotiators out of fixed-pie thinking and into reflection.

So the quiet moment is not pressure. It is thinking time, and it turns up deals that make both sides better off.

Source: mitsloan.mit.edu

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