Claire Sandman Malcomb’s research while affiliated with New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations and other places

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Publications (7)


Hedging First Offers Permits Assertiveness While Lowering Risk a Partner Walks
  • Article

December 2024

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10 Reads

Social Psychological and Personality Science

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Claire S. Malcomb

Negotiators often open with assertive offers to anchor discussions in their favor, yet this approach risks offending potential partners and foreclosing negotiations. Across four experiments, we demonstrate that hedged language softens proposals, allowing negotiators to remain assertive while reducing the risk of offending deal partners and preventing their early exit. Experiment 1 established this effect in a transactional sale context without post-deal interaction. Experiment 2 generalized the effect to a setting in which parties have an ongoing relationship and ruled out a confounding effect of message length. Experiment 3 revealed hedging signals flexibility, but this perception alone does not fully explain the effect. Experiment 4 found that hedged offers did not invite more assertive counteroffers and, after accounting for its reduced effect on impasses, led to better overall performance than directly stated ones. Hedging allows negotiators to introduce self-favorable starting points while minimizing offense and missed deal opportunities.


Identity-based rivalry: A common identity across competitors leads to rivalry perceptions and better performance

October 2024

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23 Reads

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

Researchers in psychology and management have recently examined what leads competitors to perceive that they are in a rivalry (e.g., repeated competitions) and what the consequences of rivalry are (e.g., better performance). Other researchers have long focused on the importance of social identity for how people evaluate themselves and others. In two studies, we connect and extend this past work by examining whether having the same identity as an opponent (specifically, gender or nationality) produces rivalry effects. In an online experiment, we found that sport competitors are more likely to perceive their same-gender opponents as rivals than their different-gender opponents (and this was especially the case for men). These stronger rivalry perceptions were predicted by competitors’ greater similarity, greater frequency of past competitions, and greater competitiveness with their same-gender opponents. Then, in an analysis of data from Major League Baseball (MLB), we found that batters from the Dominican Republic and the United States hit better when a same-nationality catcher was behind the plate. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of identity-based rivalry.






Beyond cheap talk accounts: A theory of politeness in negotiations

February 2022

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72 Reads

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8 Citations

Research in Organizational Behavior

Negotiations are a careful balancing act between cooperation and competition—a successful negotiation requires extracting maximal value without offending and alienating a counterpart (i.e., the negotiator’s dilemma). It is thus surprising that negotiation scholars have largely overlooked a pervasive feature of negotiations: they entail “polite” speech. In this paper, we introduce politeness as a communicative strategy that is critical to solving the negotiator’s dilemma. By strategically adjusting their utterances to signal deference and respect, negotiators can make ambitious requests without derailing the exchange. Starting with an overview of politeness and a review of the relevant negotiation literature, we offer testable propositions regarding how attempts at polite speech manifest in negotiations, who is especially likely to express them, under what conditions, and to what effect. We also consider the conditions under which this communication strategy undermines negotiators. We hope our review and theorizing will open up broader discussions on the role of polite speech in deal making and conversational dynamics.

Citations (1)


... Many of these goods connect owners to a shared past. For example, to get a discount on an older house, prospective buyers might use home-buyer "love letters" to emphasize their experience living in a house from the same time period and their goal of staying connected to the past while enjoying the house (Lee, Mason, and Malcomb 2021). ...

Reference:

EXPRESS: The Role of Heritage Connection in Consumer Valuation
Beyond cheap talk accounts: A theory of politeness in negotiations
  • Citing Article
  • February 2022

Research in Organizational Behavior