Satisficing negotiations

Negotiation procedures that are founded on the doctrine of individual rationality, where each participant is committed to maximizing its own satisfaction, are limited in their ability to accommodate the interests of others, and therefore, may unnecessarily constrain the negotiability of a decision maker, particularly in cooperative environments. Satisficing game theory provides a distinct alternative to the hyperrationality of conventional rational choice by waiving reliance on the individual rationality premise and offering an approach to negotiatory decision making that is based on a well-defined mathematical notion of satisficing, or being good enough, that permits the modeling of complex interrelationships between agents. This approach provides a mechanism to compute the attitude, or degree of conflict or contentedness, of the negotiators. Examples illustrate both single-round and multiround satisficing negotiation protocols.