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Emotions in Bargaining
Abstract
The current chapter provides an overview of theory and research on the effects of emotions in bargaining. Three different ways in which emotions shape negotiations will be discussed. The first part focuses on how the experience of one's own emotions influences the bargaining process (i.e., the intrapersonal effects). The second part reviews how emotional expressions influence the other party in negotiations (i.e., the interpersonal effects). The last part will focus on how emotions influence deceptive strategies in negotiations, and how negotiators use their emotions to deceive their opponents. Finally, suggestions for future research and practical implications are discussed.
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Are happy people more likely to be cooperative and successful negotiators? On the basis of the Affect Infusion Model (AIM; Forgas, 1995a), Experiment 1 predicted and found that both good and bad moods had a significant mood-congruent effect on people's thoughts and plans, and on their negotiation strategies and outcomes in both interpersonal and intergroup bargaining. Experiment 2 replicated these results and also showed that mood effects were reduced for persons more likely to adopt motivated processing strategies (scoring high on machiavellianism and need for approval). Experiment 3 confirmed these effects and demonstrated that the mood of the opposition also produced more mood-congruent bargaining strategies and outcomes. The results are discussed in terms of affect priming influences on interpersonal behaviors, and the implications of these findings for real-life cognitive tasks and bargaining encounters are considered.
This article presents a theory of the mutually reinforcing interaction between power and stereotyping, mediated by attention. The powerless attend to the powerful who control their outcomes, in an effort to enhance prediction and control, so forming complex, potentially nonstereotypic impressions. The powerful pay less attention, so are more vulnerable to stereotyping. The powerful (a) need not attend to the other to control their own outcomes, (b) cannot attend because they tend to be attentionally overloaded, and (c) if they have high need for dominance, may not want to attend. Stereotyping and power are mutually reinforcing because stereotyping itself exerts control, maintaining and justifying the status quo. Two legal cases and a body of research illustrate the theory and suggest organizational change strategies.
The current research examines how gratitude (vs. neutral) expression indirectly reinforces prosocial resource-allocation decisions in repeated zero-sum social exchanges. Drawing upon the emotion as social information (EASI) model, we found in four experiments that counterpart (recipient) gratitude (vs. neutral) expression regarding participants’ (allocators’) resource-allocation proposal in Exchange 1 evoked participants’ perception of their counterpart’s benevolence (when the proposal was accepted). Consistent with self-determination theory, participants’ perception of their counterpart’s benevolence led to their prosocial resource-allocation decision toward their counterpart in Exchange 2 due to their prosocial motivation, independently from and jointly with their obligatory motivation. Notably, in three experiments (Studies 1b-3), participants’ obligatory motivation attenuated the positive link between their prosocial motivation and prosocial resource-allocation decision in Exchange 2. Taken together, our findings highlight that expressing gratitude in repeated zero-sum social exchanges is a desirable strategy for shaping a counterpart’s benevolence perception and motivating the counterpart to make a prosocial resource-allocation decision.
Across five studies, we investigate the use of appeals to the moral emotion of sympathy in negotiations. We find that negotiators who actively appeal to the sympathy of their counterparts achieve improved outcomes, both in terms of distributive value claiming as well as integrative value creation. We also compare the effects of sympathy appeals to appeals based on rationality and fairness, and find that sympathy appeals are generally the most effective. These results, then, suggest that negotiators with certain sources of weakness may actually benefit from revealing their weakness, if doing so elicits sympathy in their counterparts. We also explore negotiator power as a possible boundary condition to sympathy appeals. Relative to low power negotiators, we find that high power negotiators' sympathy appeals are seen as more inappropriate and manipulative, and may damage the negotiators' relationship going forward.
Although recently some research has been accumulated on emotional expressions in negotiations, there is little research on whether expressing sadness could have any effect in negotiations. We propose that sadness expressions can increase the expressers' ability to claim value in negotiations because they make recipients experience greater other-concern for the expresser. However, only when the social situation provides recipients with reasons to experience concern for the expresser in the first place, will recipients act on their other-concern and, eventually, concede more to a sad expresser. Three experiments tested this proposition by examining face-to-face, actual negotiations (in which participants interacted with each other). In all 3 experiments, recipients conceded more to a sad expresser when, but only when, features of the social situation provided reasons to experience other-concern for the expresser, namely (a) when recipients perceived the expresser as low power (Experiment 1), (b) when recipients anticipated a future interaction (Experiment 1), (c) when recipients construed the relationship as collaborative in nature (Experiment 2), or (d) when recipients believed that it was inappropriate to blame others (Experiment 3). All 3 experiments showed that the positive effect of sadness expression was mediated by the recipients' greater other-concern. These findings extend previous research on emotional expressions in negotiations by emphasizing a distinct psychological mechanism. Implications for our understanding of sadness, negotiations, and emotions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
(c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
We hypothesized that anger expressions increase expressers’ ability to claim value in negotiations, but only when the recipients of these expressions have poor alternatives. This effect occurs because anger expression communicates toughness, and only recipients who have poor alternatives are affected by the toughness of their counterpart. In Experiment 1, participants read a scenario about a negotiator who either was angry or not. In Experiment 2, dyads negotiated face-to-face after one negotiator within each dyad was advised to show either anger or no emotion. In both studies, recipients of anger expressions who had poor alternatives conceded more. Experiment 2 also provided evidence that toughness ascribed to the expresser mediated the effect of anger expression on claiming value.
In two studies we found that feelings of guilt provoke individuals to cooperate in repeated social bargaining games (a prisoner's dilemma in Study 1 and an ultimatum game in Study 2). Feelings of guilt were either experimentally manipulated (Study 1) or assessed via self-report (Study 2) after participants had played one round of a social bargaining game. As predicted, individuals who experienced feelings of guilt (compared to individuals who felt no guilt) after pursuing a non-cooperative strategy in the first round of play, displayed higher levels of cooperation in the subsequent round of play (even one week later). Results are discussed in terms of an “affect-as-information” model, which suggests that non-cooperating individuals who experience the negative affective state associated with guilt in a social bargaining game may be using this feeling state as “information” about the future costs of pursuing an uncooperative strategy. Because in guilt the focus is on the specific, individuals are capable of ridding themselves of this emotional state through action (Lewis, 1993, p. 570)
Research on multiparty negotiation has investigated how parties form coalitions to secure payoffs but has not addressed how emotions may affect such coalition decisions. Extending research on bilateral negotiations which has generally argued that it is beneficial to communicate anger, we argue that it constitutes a considerable risk when there are more than two people present at the negotiation table. Using a computer-mediated coalition game we show that communicating anger is a risky strategy in multiparty bargaining. The main findings of three studies were that participants: (1) form negative impressions of players who communicate anger and therefore (2) exclude such players from coalitions and from obtaining a payoff share, but (3) make considerable concessions on those rare occasions that they choose to form a coalition with an angry player, or (4) when they had to form a coalition with an angry player. We discuss the implications of these results for theorizing on emotions, negotiations, and coalition formation.
Integrating recent work on emotional communication with social science theories on unpredictability, we investigated whether communicating emotional inconsistency and unpredictability would affect recipients' concession-making in negotiation. We hypothesized that emotional inconsistency and unpredictability would increase recipients' concessions by making recipients feel less control over the outcome. In Experiment 1, dyads negotiated face-to-face after one negotiator within each dyad expressed either anger or emotional inconsistency by alternating between anger and happiness. In Experiment 2, participants received angry and/or happy messages from a simulated negotiation opponent. In Experiment 3, participants read a scenario about a negotiator who expressed either anger or emotional inconsistency by alternating between anger and disappointment. In all three experiments, emotional inconsistency induced recipients to make greater concessions compared to expressing a consistent emotion. Further, in all three experiments, the effect of emotional inconsistency was mediated by recipients' feeling less control. These findings qualify previous research on anger in negotiation and demonstrate the importance of feelings of control for negotiation outcomes.
Past research has found that showing anger induces cooperative behavior from counterparts in negotiations. We build on and extend this research by examining the effects of faking anger by surface acting (i.e., showing anger that is not truly felt inside) on the behavior of negotiation counterparts. We specifically propose that surface acting anger leads counterparts to be intransigent due to reduced trust. In Experiment 1, surface acting anger increased demands in a face-to-face negotiation, relative to showing no emotion, and this effect was mediated by (reduced) trust. In Experiment 2, surface acting anger increased demands in a video-mediated negotiation, relative to showing no emotion, and this effect was explained by (reduced) trust, as in Experiment 1. By contrast, deep acting anger (i.e., showing anger that is truly felt inside) decreased demands, relative to showing no emotion, and this effect was explained by (increased) perceptions of toughness, consistent with prior research on the effects of showing anger in negotiations. The findings show that a complete understanding of the role of anger in negotiations requires attention to how it is regulated. In addition, the results suggest that faking emotions using surface acting strategies may generally be detrimental to conflict resolution.
On the basis of a social-functional approach to emotion, scholars have argued that expressing disappointment in negotiations communicates weakness, which may evoke exploitation. Yet, it is also argued that communicating disappointment serves as a call for help, which may elicit generous offers. Our goal was to resolve this apparent inconsistency. We develop the argument that communicating disappointment elicits generous offers when it evokes guilt in the target, but elicits low offers when it does not. In 4 experiments using both verbal (Experiments 1-3) and nonverbal (Experiment 4) emotion manipulations, we demonstrate that the interpersonal effects of disappointment depend on (a) the opponent's group membership and (b) the type of negotiation. When the expresser was an outgroup member and in representative negotiations (i.e., when disappointment did not evoke guilt), the weakness that disappointment communicated elicited lower offers. When the expresser was an ingroup member and in individual negotiations (i.e., when disappointment did evoke guilt), the weakness that disappointment communicated elicited generous offers from participants. Thus, in contrast to the common belief that weakness is a liability in negotiations, expressing disappointment can be effective under particular circumstances. We discuss implications for theorizing about the social functions of emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Guilt is an emotion commonly experienced in divorce. Although guilt has been shown to increase cooperative negotiation behavior in organizational contexts, this is the first investigation of the role of guilt in divorce negotiations. Using survey data of 457 divorcing individuals, the authors examined how guilt was related to the most relevant negotiation styles, while controlling for the guilt-overlapping emotions shame and regret. Guilt was related to cooperative negotiation behavior (i.e., more yielding and problem-solving behavior, and less forcing behavior). Shame was related to uncooperative negotiation behavior (i.e., more forcing, more avoiding, less problem-solving behavior), whereas regret had no additional explanatory value.
The influence of culture on the social effects of emotions in negotiations has recently gained the attention of researchers, but to date this research has focused exclusively on the cultural background of the perceiver of the emotion expression. The current research offers the first investigation of how the cultural background of the expresser influences negotiation outcomes. On the basis of the stereotype that East Asians are emotionally inexpressive and European Americans are emotionally expressive, we predicted that anger will have a stronger signaling value when East Asians rather than European American negotiators express it. Specifically, we predicted that angry East Asian negotiators will be perceived as tougher and more threatening and therefore elicit great cooperation from counterparts compared with angry European American negotiators. Results from 4 negotiation studies supported our predictions. In Study 1, angry East Asian negotiators elicited greater cooperation than angry European American and Hispanic negotiators. In Study 2, angry East Asian negotiators elicited greater cooperation than angry European American ones, but emotionally neutral East Asian and European American negotiators elicited the same level of cooperation. Study 3 showed that this effect holds for both East Asian and European American perceivers and that it is mediated by angry East Asian negotiators being perceived as tougher and more threatening than angry European American negotiators. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that the effect emerges only when negotiators hold the stereotype of East Asians being emotionally inexpressive and European Americans being emotionally expressive. We discuss implications for our understanding of culture, emotions, and negotiations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
In recent studies of the structure of affect, positive and negative affect have consistently emerged as two dominant and relatively independent dimensions. A number of mood scales have been created to measure these factors; however, many existing measures are inadequate, showing low reliability or poor convergent or discriminant validity. To fill the need for reliable and valid Positive Affect and Negative Affect scales that are also brief and easy to administer, we developed two 10-item mood scales that comprise the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The scales are shown to be highly internally consistent, largely uncorrelated, and stable at appropriate levels over a 2-month time period. Normative data and factorial and external evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the scales are also presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Anger is a common cause of strained negotiations. This research investigated the effects of experiencing anger (Experiment 1) and regulating anger (Experiment 2) on ultimatum bargaining. Experiment 1 showed that relative to a control condition, angered participants proposed less fair offers and rejected more offers when bargaining with the person who angered them. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, and additionally showed that regulating anger via reappraisal and distraction both reduced anger. However, only reappraisal effectively reduced anger for the duration of the negotiation. Participants who reappraised proposed fairer offers than those in the distraction condition, but did not differ in offers accepted. This research may have implications for what emotion regulation strategy should be employed in economic bargaining. However, future research is required to determine the most effective timing and components of reappraisal for promoting beneficial outcomes in bargaining contexts.
Investigated, in 2 experiments, whether judgments of happiness and satisfaction with one's life are influenced by mood at the time of judgment. In Exp I, moods were induced by asking 61 undergraduates for vivid descriptions of a recent happy or sad event in their lives. In Exp II, moods were induced by interviewing 84 participants on sunny or rainy days. In both experiments, Ss reported more happiness and satisfaction with their life as a whole when in a good mood than when in a bad mood. However, the negative impact of bad moods was eliminated when Ss were induced to attribute their present feelings to transient external sources irrelevant to the evaluation of their lives; but Ss who were in a good mood were not affected by misattribution manipulations. The data suggest that (a) people use their momentary affective states in making judgments of how happy and satisfied they are with their lives in general and (b) people in unpleasant affective states are more likely to search for and use information to explain their state than are people in pleasant affective states. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
in our discussion of emotion and dysfunction, we have intimated that emotions are instructive about persons because both emotions and the personality are organized around the problem of surviving, getting along, and flourishing over the life course
begin by addressing the question of what an emotion is / describe our own [the authors'] recent work directed at illuminating what we see as one of the important issues in emotion theory—the role of cognitive appraisal
embed this work in a general model of emotion, which identifies the key variables and processes within a systems framework emphasizing person-environment relationships and cognitive mediation
illustrate how emotion theory makes firm contact with a variety of topics currently being pursued across diverse psychological disciplines, especially personality and social psychology
the adaptational problem and the evolution of emotion / appraisal theory / personality, society, and biology in emotion (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Most theories of affective influences on judgement and choice take a valence-based approach, contrasting the effects of positive versus negative feeling states. These approaches have not specified if and when distinct emotions of the same valence have different effects on judgement. In this article, we propose a model of emotion-specific influences on judgement and choice. We posit that each emotion is defined by a tendency to perceive new events and objects in ways that are consistent with the original cognitive-appraisal dimensions of the emotion. To pit the valence and appraisal-tendency approaches against one another, we present a study that addresses whether two emotions of the same valence but differing appraisals—anger and fear—relate in different ways to risk perception. Consistent with the appraisal-tendency hypothesis, fearful people made pessimistic judgements of future events whereas angry people made optimistic judgements. In the Discussion we expand the proposed model and review evidence supporting two social moderators of appraisal-tendency processes.
In two experiments, the authors investigated the interpersonal effects of anger and disappointment in negotiations. Whereas previous research focused on the informational inferences that bargainers make based on others' emotions, this article emphasizes the importance of affective reactions. The findings of this study show that anger evoked a complementary emotion (fear) in targets when reported by a high-power bargainer but evoked a reciprocal emotion (anger) when reported by a low-power bargainer. This reciprocal anger led participants to offer less to low-power counterparts who reported anger. Disappointed bargainers, however, evoked a complementary emotion (guilt) in participants and increased offers, regardless of the bargainer's power position.
Research on the interpersonal functions of emotions has focused primarily on steady-state emotion rather than on emotional transitions, the movement between emotion states. The authors examined the influence of emotional transitions on social interactions and found that emotional transitions led to consistently different outcomes than their corresponding steady-state emotions. Across 2 computer-mediated negotiations and a face-to-face negotiation, participants negotiating with partners who displayed a "becoming angry" (happy to angry) emotional transition accepted worse negotiation outcomes yet formed better relational impressions of their partners than participants negotiating with partners who displayed steady-state anger. This relationship was mediated through 2 mechanisms: attributional and emotional contagion processes. The "becoming happy" (angry to happy) emotional transition as compared with steady-state happiness was not significantly related to differences in negotiation outcomes but was significantly related to differences in relational impressions, where perceivers of the "becoming happy" emotional transition gave their partners lower relational impression ratings than perceivers of steady-state happiness.
One's own emotions may influence someone else's behavior in a social interaction. If one believes this, she or he has an incentive to game emotions-to strategically modify the expression of a current emotional state-in an attempt to influence her or his counterpart. In a series of three experiments, this article investigates the extent to which people (1) misrepresent a current emotional state, (2) willfully acknowledge their strategic actions, (3) choose to game emotions over nonemotional information, and (4) improve their financial well-being from emotion gaming. (c) 2009 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
Research has documented the important influence of anger expressions on negotiation processes and outcomes. Surprisingly, however, it remains an open question if this influence depends on a core characteristic of anger displays—the intensity with which anger is expressed. Results from two negotiation studies (N = 396) using different operationalizations of anger intensity, different negotiation procedures, and different subject populations demonstrated a curvilinear relationship between the intensity of the anger expression and the negotiation counterpart's concessions. In particular, moderate-intensity anger led to larger concessions than no anger because the anger expresser was perceived as tough, and high-intensity anger led to smaller concessions than moderate-intensity anger because the anger expression was perceived as inappropriate. Furthermore, expressing anger, and, in particular, high-intensity anger, reduced anger perceivers' subjective value outcomes in the form of negative feelings about the relationship. Theoretical contributions to research on anger, emotion, and negotiation are discussed.
Emotional expressions can have a pervasive impact on bargaining behavior and outcomes. This widely documented phenomenon implies that in their communications, bargainers may adjust their apparent emotions. In the current paper, we developed a paradigm to study the communication of anger and disappointment, two of the most commonly experienced emotions in bargaining. The results of three experiments show that bargainers often adjust the intensity of their emotions in their communicated emotions. The findings show a differentiated pattern, revealing that bargainers rather exaggerate their disappointment than their anger, especially when the target of their communication is in a high power position. The results are discussed and related to the social functional approach of emotions.
Conflict is an emotional enterprise. We provide an integrative synthesis of theory and research on emotional dynamics in conflict and negotiation at three levels of analysis: the individual, the dyad, and the group. At the individual level, experienced moods and emotions shape negotiators’ cognition and behavior. At the dyadic level, emotional expressions influence counterparts’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. At the group level, patterns of emotional experience and/or expression can instigate cooperation, coordination, and conformity, or competition, conflict, and deviance. Intrapersonal (individual-level) effects of diffuse moods can be explained by affect priming and affect-as-information models, whereas effects of discrete emotions are better explained by the appraisal-tendency framework. Interpersonal (dyadic- and group-level) effects of emotions are mediated by affective (e.g., emotional contagion) and inferential (e.g., reverse appraisal) responses, whose relative predictive power can be understood through the lens of emotions as social information (EASI) theory. We offer a critical assessment of the current literature, discuss practical implications for negotiation and conflict management, and sketch an agenda for future research. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior Volume 5 is January 21, 2018. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Deception is pervasive in negotiation, and emotions are integral to the deception process. In this article, we review the theoretical and empirical research on emotions and deception in negotiation and introduce a theoretical model. In our review of the research, we find that emotions profoundly influence the decision to use deception. We also find that although negotiation is inherently interpersonal, theoretical and empirical research on deception has focused on the intrapersonal effects of emotion. For this reason, we integrate theory and research on the interpersonal effects of emotions into research on deception and propose a model—the Interpersonal Emotion Deception Model—that relates the emotions of a counterpart to the deception decisions of a negotiator. Our review and model expands our understanding of the important role of emotions in the deception decision process and provides a theoretical foundation for future research in the intrapersonal and interpersonal perspectives.
Prior research has focused on the influence of emotional expressions on the value of negotiated outcomes. Across three studies, we demonstrate that people interacting with angry counterparts become more likely to walk away from a negotiation, resulting in an impasse. In Study 1, participants who encountered counterparts expressing anger were more likely to choose an impasse, relative to those with neutral counterparts. In Study 2, building on the emotion-as-social-information model, we found that inferences of selfishness mediate the effect of angry expressions on impasses. In Study 3, we found that timing moderates the relationship between angry expressions and impasses. Furthermore, we demonstrated that perceptions of inappropriateness mediate the interactive effect of timing and angry expressions on impasses. Taken together, our work reveals that expressing anger is risky in negotiations because people infer that angry counterparts are selfish and become more likely to exit negotiations.
Emotions influence ethical behavior. Across four studies, we demonstrate that incidental anger, anger triggered by an unrelated situation, promotes the use of deception. In Study 1, participants who felt incidental anger were more likely to deceive their counterpart than those who felt neutral emotion. In Study 2, we demonstrate that empathy mediates the relationship between anger and deception. In Study 3, we contrast anger with another negative-valence emotion, sadness. We find that participants who felt incidental anger were more likely to use deception than were participants who felt incidental sadness or neutral emotion. In Study 4, we show that incentives moderate the relationship between anger and deception. Collectively, our work reveals that incidental anger promotes unethical behavior because angry people become less empathetic when pursuing their self-interest.
Both being angry (intrapersonal anger) and facing expressions of anger (interpersonal anger) impair negotiators’ goal attainment, as evident in less profitable outcomes. Here, we hypothesize that fostering self-regulation by forming if-then plans helps to overcome these detriments. In Study 1, angry negotiators attained less successful joint gains than non-angry negotiators. Angry negotiators who had formed an if-then plan about how to negotiate, however, attained similarly profitable outcomes as non-angry negotiators. In Study 2, participants negotiating with an angry opponent conceded more than those facing a non-angry opponent. Participants who had formed an if-then plan, however, conceded less than participants without self-regulatory help. These findings demonstrate that fostering self-regulation is a valuable means to overcome the detriments of intrapersonal and interpersonal anger in negotiations.
When does expressing anger in negotiations lead to concessions? Although research has begun to address this question, it has not yet examined the influence of the negotiation context. We propose that the effect of expressing anger depends on the competitiveness of the negotiation situation. Specifically, when the negotiation situation balances cooperative and competitive elements, expressing anger elicits larger concessions than no anger, and responses are driven by cooperation-inducing strategic inferences (e.g., a perception that the anger expresser is tough and threatening). However, when the negotiation context is predominantly cooperative or predominantly competitive, expressing anger does not elicit larger concessions than no anger, and responses are driven by cooperation-inhibiting affective reactions (e.g., reciprocal anger and a desire to retaliate against the anger expresser). Results from two computer-mediated negotiation experiments using different negotiation scenarios, different manipulations of the competitiveness of the situation, and different subject populations supported our hypotheses.
Emotions such as anger and happiness have pervasive interpersonal effects in negotiations. We propose that the nature of the effects depends on the target of the emotion, that is, whether the emotion is directed toward a person or a specific behavior. In a computer-mediated negotiation (N = 87), participants received either angry or happy messages from a simulated opponent, which were either behavior-oriented or person-directed. Behavior-oriented anger elicited larger concessions than behavior-oriented happiness, whereas person-directed anger elicited smaller concessions than person-directed happiness. This reversal could be attributed to the strategic value of the emotional expression, which was higher in the behavior-oriented condition than in the person-directed condition. These findings show that the interpersonal effects of anger and happiness depend critically on the target of the emotion.
Negotiators often fail to reach integrative (”win–win”) agreements because they think that their own and other’s preferences are diametrically opposed—the so-called fixed-pie perception. We examined how verbal (Experiment 1) and nonverbal (Experiment 2) emotional expressions may reduce fixed-pie perception and promote integrative behavior. In a two-issue computer-simulated negotiation, participants negotiated with a counterpart emitting one of the following emotional response patterns: (1) anger on both issues, (2) anger on participant’s high priority issue and happiness on participant’s low-priority issue, (3) happiness on high priority issue and anger on low-priority issue, or (4) happiness on both issues. In both studies, the third pattern reduced fixed-pie perception and increased integrative behavior, whereas the second pattern amplified bias and reduced integrative behavior. Implications for how emotions shape social exchange are discussed.
Does it help or hurt to communicate negative emotions in bargaining? In this article, we propose that behavioral effects are dependent on the type of negative emotion that is communicated and whether such emotions are directed at the offer or the person. We show that the two negative emotions anger and disappointment have opposing effects in negotiations: anger pays when it is directed at the offer, but disappointment pays when it is directed at the person. Offer-directed anger elicits higher offers than person-directed anger, because people infer higher limits from opponents who communicate offer-directed anger. Person-directed disappointment elicits higher offers in others than offer-directed disappointment, because it evokes higher feelings of guilt. Our findings thus show that the interpersonal effects of anger and disappointment in negotiation depend critically on the target of the emotion, and that their effects can be explained by different processes.
Two studies were conducted to investigate the impact of socially-induced positive affect on organizational conflict. In Study I, male and female subjects were provoked or not provoked, and then exposed to one of several treatments designed to induce positive affect among them. Results indicated that several of these procedures (e.g., mild flattery, a small gift, self-deprecating remarks by an opponent) increased subjects' preference for resolving conflict through collaboration, but reduced their preference for resolving conflict through competition. In addition, self-deprecating remarks by an opponent (actually an accomplice) increased subjects' willingness to make concessions to this person during negotiations. In Study 2, male and female subjects were exposed to two treatments designed to induce positive affect (humorous remarks, mild flattery). These were presented before, during, or after negotiations with another person (an accomplice). Both treatments reduced subjects' preferences for resolving conflict through avoidance and increased their preferences for resolving conflict through collaboration, but only when delivered during or immediately after negotiations. Together, the results of both studies suggest that simple interventions designed to induce positive affect among the parties to conflicts can yield several beneficial effects.
This study expands the negotiation literature by examining how negotiator behavior is predicted by various emotions felt by the negotiators and their counterparts and by counterpart negotiation behavior. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we also compare individual- and dyad-level processes that lead to negotiator behavior and outcomes. The results from a dyadic negotiation simulation showed that both the valence and agency of negotiator and counterpart emotions need to be considered to understand the roles of emotion in negotiator behavior. Negotiators tend to reciprocate counterparts' integrating, compromising, and dominating behaviors, but they also offer complementary (or matching) responses to the counterparts' dominating and yielding behaviors. Integrating behavior was more dependent on dyad-level interpersonal dynamics than were the other behaviors. The comparison of negotiator-level and dyad-level results suggests that negotiation needs to be understood in the context of collective exchanges as well as individual-level cognitive processes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In this chapter, the authors present a social functional account of emotions that attempts to integrate the relevant insights of evolutionary and social constructivist theorists. The authors' account is summarized in 3 statements: (1) social living presents social animals with problems whose solutions are critical for individual survival; (2) emotions have been designed in the course of evolution to solve these problems; and (3) in humans, culture loosens the linkages between emotions and problems so that cultures find new ways of using emotions. In the first half of the chapter the authors synthesize the positions of diverse theorists in a taxonomy of problems of social living and then consider how evolution-based primordial emotions solve those problems by coordinating social interactions. In the second half of the chapter the authors discuss the specific processes according to which culture transforms primordial emotions and how culturally shaped elaborated emotions help solve the problems of social living. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this article, we describe how envy motivates deception. We find that individuals who envy a counterpart are more likely to deceive them than are individuals who do not envy their counterpart. Across both a scenario and a laboratory study, we explore the influence of envy in a negotiation setting. Negotiations represent a domain in which social comparisons are prevalent and deception poses a particularly important concern. In our studies, we induce envy by providing participants with upward social comparison information. We find that upward social comparisons predictably trigger envy, and that envy promotes deception by increasing psychological benefits and decreasing psychological costs of engaging in deceptive behavior. We discuss implications of our results with respect to negotiations and the role of emotions in ethical decision making.
This paper focuses on the interactive effects of power and emotion in negotiation. Previous research has shown that negotiators concede more to angry opponents than to happy ones, and that power influences the amount of attention that is devoted to the social environment. Integrating these two lines of inquiry, we predicted that low-power negotiators would be influenced by their opponent's emotions (conceding more to an angry opponent than to a happy one), whereas high-power negotiators would not. Five studies using different methods (an experiment, a field simulation, and three scenario studies), different samples (students, general population, managers), and different operationalisations of power (BATNA, number of alternatives, legitimacy, support) support this hypothesis. The results are discussed in terms of a motivated information processing model of the interpersonal effects of emotions in negotiations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This research proposes that expressed emotional ambivalence elicits greater dominance in observers than expressed happiness or anger because ambivalence conveys deliberation and therefore submissiveness. Four laboratory studies yielded convergent findings across different measures of dominance and manipulations of emotional expressions (videos and vignettes). Study 1 showed that participants can identify the expression of tension and conflict as ambivalence and can reliably distinguish ambivalence expressions from the expression of a related emotion (sadness), as well as unrelated emotions (happiness and anger). Study 2 showed that participants intended to dominate the ambivalent partner significantly more than the happy, angry, or non-emotional partner. Study 3 provides evidence that negotiators dominated the ambivalent partner because they perceived the ambivalent partner as more deliberative, and thus submissive. Study 4 confirmed - using a different manipulation of ambivalence - that expressed ambivalence leads to perceived submissiveness because it suggests greater deliberation.
Using a simulated two-party negotiation, we examined how trustworthiness and power balance affected deception. In order to
trigger deception, we used an issue that had no value for one of the two parties. We found that high cognitive trust increased
deception whereas high affective trust decreased deception. Negotiators who expressed anxiety also used more deception whereas
those who expressed optimism also used less deception. The nature of the negotiating relationship (mutuality and level of
dependence) interacted with trust and negotiators’ affect to influence levels of deception. Deception was most likely to occur
when negotiators reported low trust or expressed negative emotions in the context of nonmutual or low dependence relationships.
In these relationships, emotions that signaled certainty were associated with misrepresentation whereas emotions that signaled
uncertainty were associated with concealment of information. Negotiators who expressed positive emotions in the context of
a nonmutual or high dependence relationship also used less deception. Our results are consistent with a fair trade model in
which negotiator increases deception when contextual and interpersonal cues heighten concerns about exploitation and decrease
deception when these cues attenuate concerns about exploitation.
We tested the hypothesis that the positive affect of powerful negotiators shapes the quality of negotiation processes and outcomes more than the positive affect of less powerful negotiators. Findings from two studies supported the hypothesis: powerful individuals' trait positive affect was the best predictor of negotiators' trust for each other and of whether they reached integrative outcomes. Positive affect predicted joint gains above and beyond negotiators' trait cooperativeness and communicativeness. However, positive affect was unrelated to distributive outcomes; thus, there were no observed disadvantages of being positively affective.
Social decisions are heavily influenced by emotion. For decades, the dominant research paradigm has been characterized by a focus on the decision maker's own positive or negative mood. We argue that a full understanding of the role of emotion in social decision making requires a complementary focus on interpersonal effects (i.e., the effects of one individual's emotions on the other's behavior); a focus on discrete emotions rather than general mood states; and a distinction between cooperative and competitive settings. To advance insight into these issues, we present the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) model. The model is grounded in two basic assumptions, namely that individuals use others' emotions to make sense of ambiguous situations, and that the effects of others' emotions and the processes that drive them depend critically on the cooperative or competitive nature of the situation. A review of recent research supports our analysis. We demonstrate that the interpersonal effects of emotions are pervasive and can be better understood in terms of the unique social functions of each emotion than in terms of valence. Effects in cooperative settings are best explained in terms of affective reactions (i.e., emotional contagion, affect infusion, and mood management), whereas effects in competitive contexts are better understood in terms of the strategic inferences individuals draw from other's emotions. We conclude by discussing the implications of our model and highlighting avenues for future research.
The present study investigated the influence of positive affect and visual access on the process and outcome of negotiation in an integrative bargaining task. Visual access was crossed with positive affect in a 2 × 2 design. The results supported the hypotheses that positive affect would reduce the use of contentious tactics and would increase joint benefit, just as had been found for the presence of a barrier that eliminated visual access to the other negotiator (S. Lewis & W. Fry, 1977, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance20, 75–92). This latter finding was also replicated. Only when bargainers were face to face and not in a positive state was there heavy use of contentious tactics, reduced trade-offs, and fewer integrative solutions. This means that positive affect can overcome the competitive processes and poor outcomes normally observed in face-to-face integrative bargaining. The results are discussed in terms of the cognitive dynamics of negotiation.
We examined whether the discrete, other-directed emotions of anger and compassion exert a greater influence on negotiations than mood. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theories of emotion, we specifically tested whether negotiators who felt high anger and low compassion for each other would (1) have less desire to work with each other in the future, (2) achieve fewer joint gains, and (3) successfully claim more value for themselves than negotiators who had more positive emotional regard for the other party. The results of a mixed-motive simulation experiment confirmed the first two predictions but not the last. The results confirmed that anger and compassion exerted a greater influence than mood. These findings indicate why prior advice stemming from the conflict and negotiation literature for managing anger has been counterproductive and suggest contrasting prescriptions.
The authors examined whether individual differences in social value orientation moderate responses to other's expressions of disappointment in negotiation. The literature suggested competing hypotheses: First, prosocials are more responsive to other's disappointment because they have a greater concern for other; second, proselfs are more responsive because they see other's disappointment as a threat to their own outcomes. Results of a computer-mediated negotiation in which a simulated opponent expressed disappointment, no emotion, or anger supported the second prediction: Proselfs conceded more to a disappointed opponent than to a neutral or angry one, whereas prosocials were unaffected by the other's emotion. This effect was mediated by participants' motivation to satisfy the other's needs, which disappointment triggered more strongly in proselfs than in prosocials. Implications for theorizing on emotion, social value orientation, and negotiation are discussed.