Fisher, Ury, and Patton in their book Getting to Yes discuss negotiating as a matter of hard bargaining. They divide negotiation into soft and hard negotiation, stating that the soft negotiator wants to avoid personal conflict and so makes concessions readily in order to reach agreement. The authors state that the soft negotiator wants an amicable resolution and so often ends up feeling exploited and bitter. The hard negotiator, on the other hand, sees any situation as a contest of wills in which the stronger side, the side that takes the most extreme positions and holds out longer, fares best. The hard negotiator wants to win but usually ends of producing an equally hard response, exhausting himself and his resources and harming his relationship with the other side (Fisher, Ury, and Patton, 1991, xviii).
Fisher, Ury, and Patton write about an alternative to soft or hard bargaining, and they call it principled negotiation as developed at Harvard, another version of the win-win approach:
The method of principled negotiation is hard on the merits, soft on the people. It employs no tricks and no posturing. Principled negotiation shows you how to obtain what you are entitled to and still be decent. It allows you to be fair while protecting you against those who would take advantage of your fairness (Fisher, Ury, and Patton, 1991, xviii) .
In the course of their book, Fisher, Ury, and Patton provide a number of ideas and suggestions as to how to negotiation in a way that would be most beneficial to solving problems and achieving principled negotiation. Many of these suggestions are like those offered above by various professionals. While they might be considered tricks to gain an advantage, they also imply that the person using these tricks must truly believe that they will work. Nothing in this book indicates that these "tricks" will be effective without a good attitude on the part of the negotiator.
In the course o...