When purchasing, say, a used car or a house from a private seller, it’s not uncommon for the prospective buyer to make an offer below the asking price, then negotiate with the owner before a deal is reached.

But can we predict who is more likely to go back and forth with the seller on the price? According to new research out of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, political affiliation could be one indicator of negotiation propensity.

Analyzing data involving more than 56,000 actual real estate transactions, then conducting four more experiments with another 3,000 individuals, the researchers found that conservatives are more likely than liberals to negotiate prices.

One possible reason: conservatives’ strong belief in free-market values, which encourage buyers to look out for their own financial interests in business deals. The researchers also found that conservatives believe that price negotiation is fair no matter the seller – be it a dealership, a private seller, a stranger, even a friend.

“Some people are really motivated to engage in price negotiation, and others tend to refrain from doing so,” said Archer Yue Pan, Ph.D. ’25, lead author of “Who Negotiates? The Political Psychology of Price Negotiations,” published May 3 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The senior author is Manoj Thomas, the Demir Sabanci Professor of Management and Marketing (SC Johnson College).

Conservatives’ stronger endorsement of “fair-market ideology” – the belief that free-market systems, and institutions that affect them, are not only efficient but also fair and legitimate – has been reported in previous research, most notably a 2003 study led by John Jost of New York University.

“The key idea,” Thomas said, “is that, to what extent do individuals believe that outcomes in free markets depend on deservingness? When people believe that the prices buyers get in free markets depend on their deservingness, they tend to see negotiation as their duty. They do their best to get the best price and start feeling guilty when they don’t negotiate.”

Pan and Thomas began their study by analyzing data from three sources: the residential real-estate market; and Google searches for two retail websites, one that allows price negotiation (eBay.com) and one that does not (Amazon.com).

For the housing market analysis (study 1), the researchers obtained weekly transaction data – including the asking and selling prices – from Redfin for 2017 for every county in the U.S., and merged that with both county-by-county results from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, obtained from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Data and Science Lab, and county-by-county demographics from the U.S. Census Bureau.

They computed the average sale-to-list ratio (sale price divided by list price), in which a smaller average ratio in a county would indicate greater negotiation propensity. That figure was combined with the percentage of Republican votes in the county and the demographic information. The researchers found that counties that voted Republican showed a significantly lower sale-to-list ratio, indicating increased negotiation.

Similar results came out of study 2: Counties that voted Republican had more Google searches for eBay than for Amazon.

In addition to analyzing publicly available data, Pan and Thomas also collected their own data examining: the role of ideology in negotiation propensity (study 3); whether endorsing free markets would spur participants to embrace that ideology and, in turn, negotiation behavior (study 4); and whether conservatives’ sensitivity to economic threats (5a) or aggression toward groups not of the same mind, known as “outgroups” (5b), play a role.

All studies pointed to the same result: Conservatives show a greater propensity to negotiate price than liberals. But study 4 showed that the liberals’ willingness to negotiate price can be increased by “priming” an individual – extolling the virtues of free-market ideology, then asking about their willingness to negotiate price.

“Our aim was to show how our cultural environment influences ideological beliefs,” Thomas said. “It you’re surrounded by people who say that free markets offer fair outcomes only to people who deserve it, then your behavior will change.”

The overall findings, the researchers wrote, show that shopping behaviors aren’t just about money. They’re also shaped by personal beliefs about how the economy should work. And the correlation between the belief in free-market ideology and conservative political leaning is strong, they said.