Sales · The sale reopened thirty times, In many B2B cycles, a professional buyer deliberately fragments the negotiation: after an agreement in principle, they revisit the price, then the deadlines, then the maintenance, then the price again. Each point taken in isolation seems legitimate, but the repetition turns the sale into a marathon. The salesperson, whose bonus depends on signing this quarter, ends up granting discounts they would never have released all at once. It is the commercial illustration of attrition: the buyer does not win an argument, they win through the seller's weariness.
Political · Waiting for the embers to go cold, Faced with a social movement or a street protest, a classic strategy of those in power consists in letting time pass without any spectacular concession. Mobilisations live on bursts of energy that are hard to sustain: after several weeks, activist fatigue, the return to work and media wear cause the pressure to subside. The government then enacts the contested measure before a demobilised opposition. Inertia is not passivity: it is an attrition manoeuvre that bets on the adversary running out of steam.
Diplomatic · Camp David, thirteen days of exhaustion, The Camp David Accords (September 1978) illustrate the documented face of attrition. After thirteen days of a gruelling closed-door session, the American delegation, describing itself as "exhausted", let a discrepancy on the settlements question slip through on the last day, so much had fatigue blunted its vigilance. Mediators' accounts note that a meeting held too late on a Saturday evening had already produced misunderstandings "for want of grasping the nuances". The marathon format, chosen to force an agreement, also wears down those who conduct it: a lesson in decisions taken under extreme fatigue.
Judicial · What the judge had for breakfast, The study by Danziger, Levav and Avnaim-Pesso (PNAS, 2011) measured the effect of decision fatigue on judges ruling on parole. The rate of favourable decisions dropped from around 65% at the start of a session to almost zero just before the break, then jumped abruptly back to 65% after the meal. Transposed to negotiation, this result sheds light on attrition: as willpower runs down, the decision-maker tips towards the default option, the one requiring least effort. To stretch out a negotiation is to push the other party towards that point of least resistance.
Corporate · The annual negotiations that never end, In labour relations, the deliberate spreading of the mandatory annual negotiations over many months is a well-known attrition manoeuvre. Where staff representatives negotiate on top of their day jobs, with limited means, management can call on permanent resources. Inconclusive technical meetings, postponements, late documents: activist energy dissipates. At the end of their patience, the elected representatives often accept a settlement below their initial demands. Here, the erosion owes less to the weakness of the arguments than to the asymmetry of patience.
Everyday life · The child, master of attrition, The most universal form of the technique plays out at a child's level: the repeated demand. "Can we go? Can we go? Can we go?" The parent, whose self-control resource is depleted as the day wears on, eventually gives in not because the demand has become legitimate, but because saying no one more time costs too much energy. It is the intuitive demonstration of ego depletion: repetition does not convince, it wears down. As adults, we give in for the same reasons, with better pretexts.
