In New Negotiations, Why Trust Radius and Level work in the West—and Harmony Matters More in East Asia
I have often told participants in my workshops and classes that a straightforward lesson about negotiation is this: Build trust, and people will share information.
This intuition is well supported by research conducted largely in Western contexts. But recent evidence suggests that this relationship does not always hold in the same way across cultures.
A multi-study paper by Yao and colleagues (2025) shows that trust can play different roles in driving information exchange depending on cultural context, particularly when comparing Western and East Asian negotiations.
The Hidden Variable: Trust Radius
Managers typically think about how much they trust someone. The research suggests they should also think about who qualifies for trust in the first place.
In many Western societies, people have a wide trust radius: new counterparts are quickly treated as legitimate partners. In these settings, higher trust leads naturally to open information sharing—and better deals.
In much of East Asia, trust radius is narrower. Trust is strong within close circles, but it does not automatically extend to unfamiliar partners. As a result, even when trust is high, negotiators may still avoid openly sharing priorities or constraints.
An Alternative Path to Value Creation
What, then, predicts information sharing in East Asian negotiations?
Yao et al. find that harmony concern—a motivation to preserve relational smoothness and avoid interpersonal disruption—plays a central role. Across their studies, harmony concern was positively associated with information exchange, which in turn supported better joint outcomes.
Notably, this pathway operated independently of trust level. In other words, negotiators shared information not because they necessarily trusted their counterpart more, but because doing so aligned with maintaining relational harmony.
What This Means for Leaders
The practical implication is not that trust is irrelevant in some cultures. It is that trust alone may be an incomplete explanation for cooperative behavior.
Managers negotiating across cultures should be cautious about interpreting limited information sharing as a sign of low trust. In some contexts, openness depends less on trust per se and more on whether the interaction supports harmony and relational appropriateness.
This also suggests that common trust-building tactics—such as early self-disclosure or overt vulnerability—may not always be the most effective way to encourage information exchange. In East Asian contexts, behaviors that signal respect, restraint, and relational sensitivity may be more consequential.
Key Takeaway
For managers, the lesson is simple but consequential:
Effective negotiation requires understanding not just whether people cooperate, but why they do so.
Trust remains important. But in global negotiations, it is not the only mechanism that matters.
Personal note: I usually emphasize that we should never negotiate with counterparts purely on the basis of stereotypes or social categories—nationality, gender, race, or otherwise. That said, these categories, including whether a counterpart comes from a Western or East Asian context, can serve as useful starting points for forming initial hypotheses. The real skill lies in using these starting points thoughtfully—and then updating them based on the actual behavior unfolding at the table.
Reference: Yao, J., Li, H., Zhang, Z. X., & Brett, J. M. (2025). Information Exchange in Negotiations: Trust Level, Trust Radius, and Harmony Concern in East Asia versus West. Academy of Management Journal, in press, https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2023.0052
