Negotiating Through the Night: How Sleep Deprivation Can Affect Negotiation Processes and Outcomes

Sleep deprivation is highly prevalent in negotiations, but little is known about how sleep deprivation may affect negotiation processes and outcomes. We present a theoretical framework for understanding and investigating effects of sleep deprivation on a range of negotiation outcomes, particularly joint economic outcomes, individual economic outcomes, social perceptions, and impasses. With an emphasis on integrative negotiations, we identified cognitive capacities and epistemic motivation as highly relevant psychological processes negatively affected by sleep deprivation, as these impairments hamper effective information exchange and downregulate or bias information processing in negotiations. This, in turn, reduces the quality of (integrative) agreements. Regarding impasses, our model predicts that impaired cognitive capacities and sleep deprivation-induced negative emotions (e.g., anger) could increase the likelihood of non-agreements. Moreover, sleep deprivation-induced negative emotions should have a negative effect on social perceptions. Finally, we discuss potential moderators on the task, the individual, and the inter-individual level and show how sleep deprivation-induced impairments can be compensated for. In sum, our analysis advances the understanding of how and when sleep deprivation might have an effect on negotiation outcomes.