Battery pack
Both negotiators claiming a single battery pack, each of them with a different purpose.
What this measures
Two parties both need a single battery pack. One needs the cells; the other needs the casings. As in the orange, neither is told the other’s motive and neither is told a trade exists, and an observer classifies the outcome in silence.
The point is the contrast. The orange is one of the most-repeated illustrations in the negotiation literature, so an LLM may reach the integrative solution because it recognises the setup rather than because it worked out that the two needs are compatible. Swapping in an object with no such literature removes the recognition route and leaves only the reasoning one.
Read this page beside the orange. An LLM that does well on both is finding trades; one that does well only on the orange is finishing a story it has already read.
Human result benchmark
An LLM that finds the integrative trade by reasoning about the parties’ needs should do as well here as on the orange. One that does markedly worse was recalling a famous story.
Experimental setup
A structural clone of the orange: the same guards, the same outcome taxonomy, the same silent observer, with only the object swapped. The comparison between the two pages is the result, which is why the design is held identical.
Two LLMs are seated as the parties and speak in strict alternation, each holding a private briefing that states its own need and nothing else. Both parties are powered by the same LLM, so a result is about one LLM on both sides of the table. A third LLM observes in silence and classifies the outcome.
Recall is the confound this page exists to address: the orange appears in negotiation textbooks and almost certainly in training data, so a single scenario leaves reasoning and recognition telling the same story. A negotiation is closed when the observer judges the parties to have reached agreement.
| Party A | An LLM briefed privately on its own need |
| Party B | An LLM briefed privately on its own need |
| Observer | An LLM reading the negotiation in silence and labelling the outcome |
| Speaks first | Party A, then strict alternation |
The prompts
Party A — private briefing
You are negotiating with another party over a single crate of decommissioned laptop battery packs. There is exactly one crate, and you claim it. You must talk with the other party and reach an agreement about what happens to the crate. Nothing is decided until you both agree; you cannot simply take it. Your situation: this weekend you have a friend coming over, and you promised you will finish the home battery you are building for them. It needs lithium cells. Getting as many of the lithium cells as possible is what matters to you: the more you get, the more storage capacity you'll be able to build. If you build a lot of capacity, your friend will be very happy. If you don't build any, you will break your promise. How to behave: - Reply with one short message per turn: 2 to 4 sentences, plain conversational text. - Speak in the first person, directly to the other party. No narration, no stage directions, no bullet points. - Negotiate for the outcome that is best for you.
Party B — private briefing
You are negotiating with another party over a single crate of decommissioned laptop battery packs. There is exactly one crate, and you claim it. You must talk with the other party and reach an agreement about what happens to the crate. Nothing is decided until you both agree; you cannot simply take it. Your situation: this weekend you have a friend coming over, and you promised you will finish the set of machined brackets you are making for them. It needs aluminium casings. Getting as much of the aluminium casing as possible is what matters to you: the more you get, the more brackets you'll be able to machine. If you machine a lot of brackets, your friend will be very happy. If you don't machine any, you will break your promise. How to behave: - Reply with one short message per turn: 2 to 4 sentences, plain conversational text. - Speak in the first person, directly to the other party. No narration, no stage directions, no bullet points. - Negotiate for the outcome that is best for you.
Observer — classification instructions
You silently observe a negotiation between two parties over a single crate of
decommissioned laptop battery packs. You are an instrument, not a participant: you
never address the parties and they never see your output. Read the transcript and
report what has happened so far.
Set agreement_reached to true when the parties have evidently settled on an
arrangement: one party has proposed what happens to the crate and the other has
assented. The proposal need not be exact or fully detailed — "you take most of the
cells, I'll take the casings", answered with agreement, counts, and so does agreeing to
a division whose fine details are left to be worked out later. Set it false only
when no concrete division is on the table yet, when the most recent proposal has not
been answered, or when a party has merely expressed goodwill ("let's find a way",
"that sounds promising").
Classify allocation_type:
- integrative_full: divided along the part axis AND each party ends up with all
of what it needs — the lithium cells entirely to one party and the
aluminium casings entirely to the other. Neither
gives up any of its own part. No surplus is left unclaimed.
- integrative_partial: divided along the same part axis but incompletely — a party
gets only "most" or "the majority" of its part, or hands
some of its own part to the other as payment or goodwill.
The right idea, but surplus is wasted.
- distributive: divided by quantity — split in half, shared, taken in turns, or
any split where each party gets a fraction of the whole intact packs. Both needs are only partly met.
- lopsided: one party ends up with the entire crate and the other with nothing.
- none: no agreement has been reached yet.
allocation: one plain sentence describing who ends up with what.
rationale: one or two sentences justifying the classification.
confidence: your confidence in this reading, between 0 and 1.
What agreement did LLM negotiators reach?
- integrative full
- Both parties got everything they needed — the two uses were separated.
- integrative partial
- The trade was found but incompletely realised, or only one side's need was fully met.
- distributive
- The object was split as a quantity. Both sides got half of what they needed.
- lopsided
- One party took essentially all of it.
- none
- The parties talked and stayed apart — a genuine impasse.
Run it yourself
No run yet.
The run
Bibliography
- (1981). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Houghton Mifflin. The instruction to separate interests from positions, taught through the orange — the illustration this variant withholds.
- (1965). A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations. McGraw-Hill. The distributive / integrative distinction the outcome taxonomy is built on.
- (1925). Constructive Conflict. In Metcalf & Urwick (eds.), Dynamic Administration (1941). The integrative-bargaining idea being tested, here without its familiar illustration.