Who Should Make the First Offer

Most negotiation advice tells you to make the first offer. That advice is supported by experiment, which already puts it ahead of most negotiation advice. What is almost always omitted are the two conditions under which it is wrong, and the technique that neutralises it when the other side moves first.

The finding

Galinsky and Mussweiler ran three experiments published in 2001 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Whichever party made the first offer — buyer or seller — achieved the better outcome, and first offers strongly predicted final prices. In the third study, a chemical-plant negotiation, the correlation between the first offer and the settlement was r = .85.¹

That is a large number, and it is worth pausing on what it means: the opening figure explained most of the variance in where the deal landed. Everything after it was adjustment.

There is a reason to trust this more than most findings in this area. Anchoring was included in the Many Labs replication project — 36 laboratories, roughly 6,300 participants — and it replicated robustly, in some cases with stronger effects than the originals.² On a desk that has spent several articles documenting things that failed to replicate, this one held.

When moving first is wrong

When the other side knows more than you. An anchor sets a reference point, and if your reference point is uninformed, you may anchor below what you could have obtained. The classic asymmetry is the specialist buyer and the non-specialist seller: name a price first and you may have just given away the discount you did not know existed.

The rule that follows is precise. Move first when you know the range well and your counterpart does not. Let them move first when the reverse is true — and treat their opening as information rather than as a position.

When the anchor is extreme enough to end the conversation. Aggressive openings raise the probability of the other party walking away. There is a zone above which an anchor stops pulling and starts insulting, and the cost of finding it is the deal.

It is also worth noting a finding rarely quoted: people who move first obtain better economic outcomes but report more anxiety and less satisfaction with the result — because a fast acceptance tells you that you could have asked for more.

The countermeasure

This is the most useful part of the 2001 paper and the part that never makes it into the advice.

The first-mover advantage was eliminated when the party receiving the offer directed attention to information inconsistent with the anchor: their own alternatives and walk-away point, their own target, or the opponent's likely reserve price.¹

Practically, before any negotiation where you expect to receive the first number, write down three figures: what you will walk away at, what you are aiming for, and what you believe their limit is. Written down, not thought about. When their number arrives, read yours first.

You do not resist an anchor by resolving to resist it. You resist it by having somewhere else for your attention to go.

One limitation worth stating

Anchoring in factual estimation and in negotiated prices is robust. Anchoring in preference and product valuation — the arbitrary-number-then-what-would-you-pay paradigm — has replicated inconsistently, with at least one prominent failure.³

The distinction matters if you were planning to use anchoring in pricing pages or menus on the strength of this literature. The negotiation evidence does not automatically carry there.

The summary

Make the first offer when you are the better-informed party. Let them go first when you are not, and use their number as data. Either way, decide your three figures before the conversation starts — because the side that has already written down its own numbers is the side the anchor does not move.