Title: Stop Saying ‘Thank You’ in Job Negotiations, New Research Finds

Gratitude may not always be a good thing — at least at the negotiating table.

Those are the findings in a soon-to-be-published study by Jeremy Yip, an assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business, and his co-authors. 

“How can gratitude sometimes be dysfunctional? It is something that we tend to express, maybe out of politeness, maybe out of reciprocity,” Yip said. “But is there a dark side to gratitude and how might that relate to negotiations?”

Yip teaches classes on negotiating and leadership in the McDonough School of Business and studies the psychology of emotions and “trash-talking” in negotiations and organizational behavior. He and his co-authors argue that in competitive contexts — such as in job negotiations, car dealerships or Facebook Marketplace sales — people who express gratitude are more likely to be taken advantage of.

We asked Yip why expressing gratitude can backfire and for his masterclass tips on how to navigate any negotiation.

Ask a Professor: The Psychology of Gratitude and How to Negotiate

Why is gratitude not always a good emotion to express?

The prevailing assumption about gratitude is that it’s functional and beneficial. It serves as a social lubricant to reduce interpersonal friction that we encounter in our daily lives. That’s helpful when you think about these cooperative relationships when you have to work together. 

But if we express gratitude in situations like competitive situations where it might not be expected and might even be exploited, how can that be detrimental to the expressor? What we found in general across different experiments was that people who are dealing with a grateful counterpart are more likely to behave in a more self-interested manner. They make more aggressive offers in negotiations compared to when they interact with a neutral counterpart.

In what ways can gratitude be beneficial?

What I think is important about this is not to say to stop expressing gratitude. We have research that shows when you do express gratitude in cooperative relationships, it’s actually very beneficial and promotes pro-social behavior on behalf of the perceiver. It’s when we find ourselves in these more zero-sum situations where we don’t know one another and are competing for scarce resources that expressing gratitude may be exploited.

When people express gratitude, how can that trigger a less-than-optimal response from the other party?

There’s research on emotions as social information. When people express emotions, we often will either mimic those emotions or make cognitive inferences about those emotions. What we found is that when people express gratitude, the perceiver infers that the person is going to be more forgiving, more tolerant, more lenient. As a result, if I make an aggressive offer, I expect that they’ll be more likely to accept it. We also found that when people express gratitude, the perceivers will go as far as to deceive their grateful counterparts. 

How should we approach gratitude in these competitive situations?

With negotiations, there are many times when you exchange information and try to find out the financial terms of a particular deal. We want to be a little bit more deliberate and strategic, not in a deceptive way, but intentional about the types of social signals we’re sending. Even when it’s something like purchasing a car, the dealership will offer to throw in this extra option. If it’s something you actually wanted, that’s great. But if they gave it to you as a value-add, but it’s not something you necessarily asked for, you shouldn’t feel compelled to express effusive gratitude.

How does culture affect norms around gratitude?

I’m going to speak beyond the data at this point because we didn’t look at cultural differences, but gratitude is very much tied to norms of politeness. There’s this issue of authenticity that’s also associated with the norms that govern these types of behaviors. I think generally in the U.S. there are norms around civility. You’re supposed to say those things, but if it’s inauthentic, sometimes people don’t like it, and it can backfire.

How can people balance being deliberate with gratitude while also being respectful in competitive situations?

One of the dimensions of emotional intelligence is emotion management or regulation. What we’re trying to make people aware of is that we often want to tailor our emotions to our situations and recognize that people behave differently in these types of social contexts in response to those emotions. There are different kinds of emotion regulation strategies that people can engage in when they’re in these social interactions.

The research suggests that emotional intelligence is positively correlated with age, which leads us to believe that through experience, we acquire more skill and become better at it. Absolutely, there are ways for us to develop our skills over time, but I will say developing emotional intelligence is not something you can do in a week. It’s something that happens over years.

What tips would you offer to someone in a negotiation?

It’s okay to be friendly, but the issue is when you readily express appreciation for small things that aren’t merited or don’t deserve thanks. It’s realizing you can be friendly without necessarily being appreciative unless it’s warranted. It’s a sad thing to say in this world — we want people to be positive, but in the world of negotiations, there are some people who are so friendly that they end up being more accommodating, and as a result, unintentionally walk away from the bargaining table with less.