The Advantage of Having an Honest Reputation: The "Big Two" Agency and Communion Dimensions in Negotiations.

Building upon research on the "Big Two" dimensions of social judgment- agency (or the ability-competence dimension) and communion (or the social-moral dimension), we explore the distinctive and primary role of being perceived as honest (a trait belonging to the moral dimension) vs. friendly or skilled, in negotiations. We demonstrate that negotiators desire to be perceived for and foremost as honest, next as skilled and least, as friendly (Study 1). Results further confirmed the advantage of honest reputations. Although counterparts with honest or friendly reputations are expected to be equally more pro-social than those with skilled reputations, presumably honest counterparts are higher (than friendly) in perceived professionality, reliability and fairness (Study 2a). Similarly, while skilled reputations induce ability-based trust and friendly reputations induce benevolence and integrity based trust, honest reputations induce high trust across all three basis of trust (Study 2b). Finally, when examining actual behaviors, presumably honest counterparts benefit more- they are less likely to be deceived (Study 2b), receive better offers in distributive negotiations (Study 3), and receive more value creating offers in integrative negotiations (Study 4). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.