Gordon Kaufman Professor of Management
Professor of Work and Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management
Faculty Director, MIT Behavioral Research Lab
Vice Chair of Research, Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
Director, PON Research Lab and MIT’s Negotiation for Executives Program
Curhan specializes in the psychology of negotiation and conflict resolution. A recipient of support from the National Science Foundation, he has pioneered a social psychological approach to the study of “subjective value” in negotiation—that is, the feelings and judgments concerning the instrumental outcome, the process, the self, and the relationship. His research uses the Subjective Value Inventory (SVI; Curhan et al., 2006) to examine the precursors, processes, and long-term consequences of subjective value in negotiation. He also studies the dynamics of negotiation and brainstorming.
Curhan is Vice Chair for Research and a member of the Executive Committee of the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, and he is also Director of the PON Research Lab and Director of MIT’s Negotiation for Executives Program.
Curhan founded the Program for Young Negotiators, Inc., an organization dedicated to the promotion of negotiation training in primary and secondary schools. His book, Young Negotiators (Houghton Mifflin, 1998) has been used to train more than 35,000 children across the United States and abroad to achieve their goals without the use of violence.
Curhan has received the Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship for excellence in teaching and university service, as well as MIT’s Institute-wide teaching award, MIT Teaching with Technology Award, and MIT Sloan’s Jamieson Prize for excellence in teaching.
Education
A.B. in Psychology, Harvard University
M.A., Stanford University
Ph.D., Stanford University
Research interests
Negotiation, conflict resolution, social psychology, organizational behavior, education
Selected publications
- Young Negotiators. Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
- With J. R. Overbeck. “Making a Positive Impression in a Negotiation: Gender Differences in Response to Impression Motivation.” Negotiation and Conflict Management Research 1 (2008): 179–193.
- With A. Pentland. “Thin Slices of Negotiation: Predicting Outcomes from Conversational Dynamics within the First 5 Minutes.” Journal of Applied Psychology 92 (2007): 802–811.
- With H. A. Elfenbein and H. Xu. “What Do People Value When They Negotiate? Mapping the Domain of Subjective Value in Negotiation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91 (2006): 493–512.
- With W.J. Becker. “The dark side of subjective value in sequential negotiations: The mediating role of pride and anger.” Journal of Applied Psychology 103 (2018): 74-87.
- With H.A. Elfenbein & G. J. Kilduff. “Getting off on the right foot: Subjective value versus economic value in predicting longitudinal job outcomes from job offer negotiations.” Journal of Applied Psychology 94 (2009): 524-534.