Noam Ebner, Anita D. Bhappu, Jennifer Gerarda Brown, Kimberlee K

 
5) Increased Tendency Towards Sinister Attribution 
The media effects of email negotiation exacerbate the tendency to-
ward the sinister attribution error: the bias toward seeing negative 
events as the outgrowth of others’ negative intentions rather than 
unintended results or conditions beyond their control. The lack of 
social presence and of contextual cues lends a sense of distance and 
of vagueness to the interaction. The asynchronous dynamic of email 
negotiations adds to this challenge. Research shows that e-
negotiators ask fewer clarifying questions than face-to-face negotia-
tors do. Instead of gathering information from their counterparts, 
email negotiators may be more likely to make assumptions
(Thompson and Nadler 2002); if those assumptions later prove un-
founded, the negotiators may perceive the other’s inconsistent ac-
tions or preferences as a breaking of trust. The power of the sinister 

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attribution error in e-negotiation is clearly demonstrated by experi-
ments showing that e-negotiators are more likely to suspect their 
opposite of lying than are face-to-face negotiators, even when no 
actual deception has taken place (Thompson and Nadler 2002). 
Analysis of failed email negotiations shows that they tend to include 
unclear messages, irrelevant points, and long general statements 
(Thompson 2004), each of which provides ample breeding ground 
for the sinister attribution error.
Summary 
In this section, we have described five important implications of the 
unique characteristics of email communication for negotiation. 
Highlighting these particular media effects is particularly important 
in order to understand the challenges posed by the media to negotia-
tors trained to conduct face-to-face interactions. Next, we turn to 
recommending skill-sets that negotiators need to be equipped with 
in order to cope with these implications.