Bargaining Behavior: A Comparison Between Mature Industrial Personnel and College Students

The study reported here was conducted for two purposes. The primary purpose was to provide an experimental test of certain theoretical models of bargaining behavior. A second purpose, emphasized in this paper, was to study the bargaining behavior of experienced personnel in business as contrasted with the bargaining behavior of college students. The design of the study was dictated by the requirements of the theoretical model; the interest in comparing businessmen with students was subordinate, and did not in itself influence the fundamental features of the design. Thus, while the test of the hypothesis is formal and has some rigor, the comparison of the two subject populations is informal, and is suggestive and provocative, perhaps, rather than definitive. In general the groups were notably similar in regard to their bidding patterns and the equilibrium solutions they reached.