What’s the Best Way to Give Ground in a Negotiation?

In zero-sum negotiations — such as bargaining over the price of a product, haggling over rent, or negotiating the price of antique — a key challenge is figuring out just how much to change your offer at each round of the negotiation. Give away too much and you devalue your offer; give away too little and you risk getting stuck in an impasse. The situation is complicated by the many meanings that the amounts of these concessions can signal: That a negotiator wants to settle quickly, or that they lack ambition, or maybe that they want to encourage reciprocity.