Representing Interactional Judgments in Multilateral Bargaining

Abstract

In face-to-face bargaining, one usuallyfinds a large variety of actions that are not explainable and sometimes not even compatible with the usual rationality assunmptions of the actors. It is widely accepted that bounded rationality approaches are more appropriate for such settings. Most bounds to rationality refer to how the situation and the partners are perceived by the actor Two crucial components of such a perception and judgment are conceptualized as processing aspirations and the socialfield. Ostmann reported on the use of the socialfield concept and on afirst trial to explain bargaining results by aspirations and the socialfield; Another paper explored aspiration processing in a more detailed way. This article deals with questions of how nonstandard measures for the socialfield concept can be used successfully to explain or predict fundamental processes in face-to-face-bargaining.

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