ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview and a discussion on elements, negotiation application, and limitations of persuasion methods. The concept of a range of persuasion tools used in negotiation emanated from F. K. Berrien, a professor of psychology in the early 1940s. This idea was later developed by a team of psychologists and resulted in a popular framework listing five persuasion tools that are commonly exhibited across a broad spectrum of negotiations. These five are known as Compromise, Bargaining, Emotion, Logic and Threat and the initial letters form the acronym C-BELT. The C is often shown slightly apart, as the persuasion method of compromise is considered to be the weakest persuasion tool. Research has shown that inexperienced negotiators tend to use compromise as this is the easiest and least confrontational, whereas strong negotiators with a high level of intuition tend to prefer the persuasion methods of threat and emotion.
