>> This is definitely cultural, by the way. Actually, I also thought about this one. I was actually thinking of the market scene from "Life of Brian": "What? Y

>> This is definitely cultural, by the way. Actually, I also thought about this one. I was actually thinking of the market scene from "Life of Brian": "What? You don't want to haggle on price?"! But I did not pursue this thought as this is less of culture and more of context. In cheap trinkets or some other shop, the one thing on the back of your mind is that you can always walk away from it and there is no harm done. Moreover, in this case it is a buyer's market, as in, you simply try your luck with another shop/keeper if it didn't work out with a previous shop. And in the end, humans are loss averse, so there is still a lot of satisfaction if you came away without spending a single penny/rupee/roubles/etc. OTOH, a job negotiation is anything but that. More often than not, a job market can be a seller's market (depends on your situation as well). You have invested a lot of time and effort in a particular interview (remember humans being loss averse? Now the tables are stacked against you), and if the negotiation scenario is lined against you (no other competing offers at the same time, the company is doing work that you would love to get into and the company knows that for sure, etc.) then it is not as clear cut as a trinket price negotiation.