Culture is a factor the negotiators bring to negotiations with them. The negotiators' behaviors will reflect their cultural characteristics. People from different cultural backgrounds have a different understanding of negotiating approaches, methods, techniques and styles.
Two researchers of University of Michigan have proved that there is an opposite pattern in Americans and Japanese way of cognizing. Americans cognize things directly through the influence of what looks most important to them. Chinese people' way of thinking is comprehensive. The Chinese thinking pattern is whole orientation, from the whole to the part, from big to small, from general to specific, which when taken to the negotiation table forms a procedure of discussing principles first, then deal with the concrete matters relating to work, that is talking of clear and definite of the overall principle of the negotiation first, then reach a unanimous agreement on the specific problems.
Western people attach importance to the logical relationship among things because of the influence of logical thinking which result in that they begin the negotiation with some specific problems in the negotiations. When come to the selecting and utilizing of the language of the negotiations, Americans' way of communicating is much more direct, they never give ambiguous words or talk evasively, on the contrary, they often use simple, clear and frank ways to express their thoughts.
When being asked about something, Americans always give a clear and definite answer which is on the opposite of the value of Chinese people, who say that “silence is golden”. In addition, Americans are good at debating. They think that debating is not only the right of issue opinions of a person, but also has good prospects of solving problems; moreover, they think that the difference of opinion will not influence the relationship between people.
In eastern culture, people want to maintain the reputation of both parties, the group or other people, they usually use ambiguous and indirect words, even if they don't agree with others, they seldom refuse or retort directly, instead, they state their own opinion circuitously or talk intermittently to show their embarrassment. For example, if Chinese negotiators feel awkward about some propose in the negotiation, the will say "maybe" or "perhaps" instead of saying "no" which is difficult to understand for Western people who may misunderstand it as "there is a chance".