Personality Engineering with AI Agents: A New Methodology for Negotiation Research

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 19 May 2026] Personality Engineering with AI Agents: A New Methodology for Negotiation Research Michelle A. Vaccaro, Jared R. Curhan According to canonical negotiation theory, people's success in a negotiation depends on how well they balance competing demands--empathizing and asserting, demonstrating concern for other and concern for self, being soft on the people and hard on the problem. Yet people struggle to manage these tensions, so researchers have lacked the ability to rigorously test the field's prescriptions under controlled conditions. AI agents do not face the same limitations, and their precision, repertoire, consistency, and scalability enable a new class of experiments to contribute to negotiation theory. In this article, we introduce personality engineering: a methodology that uses AI agents to precisely parameterize, manipulate, and evaluate negotiator personality. We propose using the interpersonal circumplex--and its two core dimensions of warmth and dominance--as a foundational coordinate system for the field. This approach offers both a rigorous methodology for testing classic negotiation theories and a practical guide for designing the personalities of AI negotiation agents. Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC); Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) Cite as: arXiv:2605.20554 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2605.20554v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.20554 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Michelle Vaccaro [view email] [v1] Tue, 19 May 2026 23:11:19 UTC (480 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cs cs.HC cs.SI References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)