Jen Reynolds (Oregon) – How Commitments Shape Interests

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How to negotiate durable agreements. People can want to change but may be committed to things that keep that change from happening. This is because interests are context dependent.

• Look at the following literatures: miswanting literature – we don’t really know what we always want, altruistic negotiation literature – somebody has to bite the bullet eventually, how do we “negotiation for the future,” sunken costs – hard to rejigger the calculus after high sunken costs.
  Teamwork b/w insiders and outsiders can help bring these commitment issues to the fore – insiders might be able to identify them with the help of outsiders..
  Generational justice is a term that is used to describe similar processes.
  Commitment lies upon a continuum – everything written is carved in stone to this is what we have today and if we have to change things we will.
  Hand tying and pre-commitments, isn’t this a strategic matter. The psychological literature on counterfactuals will help on this point.
  What about the timing of past and future commitments – where do we begin? It maybe helpful to offer something concrete where we begin – T1, T 2 or T minus 1
  Think about the status quo bias and/or endowment effects – they have to relate to past commitments
  Temporal construal – what you are thinking about now versus what you were thinking about then. It’s a question of abstract thinking versus specific tasks related to the action.
  There’s some great literature in strategic planning that could be helpful.

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