As preparation for a negotiation involving the merger of two corporations through direct purchase, an experiment was conducted to determine whether the negotiations could be enhanced by understanding how 'uninvolved third parties' felt about the different aspects to be negotiated.These aspects were topics such as dividing shares of the merged company, and policy toward retaining employees and assets.The research effort was to assess the operational viability of a process which required about an hour from beginning to end to provide that 'third party view of the issues.Aspects of the merger were surfaced and combined into vignettes comprising 2-4 element, and evaluated by an outside panel of respondents, unknown to the negotiating parties.The panel responses to the elements were deconstructed into the potential ability of each element to drive agreement (MERGE -YES) or disagreement (MERGE -NO).The process quickly revealed the elements on which there would probably be agreement, and elements over which there might be conflict.A segmentation of the test respondents showed two different mind-sets, uncovering types of sticking points for each mind-set.