Gert-Jan Lelieveld’s research while affiliated with Leiden University and other places

Research has shown that negotiators sometimes misrepresent their emotions, and communicate a different emotion to opponents than they actually experience. Less is known about how people evaluate such negotiation tactics. Building on person perception literature, we investigated in three preregistered studies (N = 853) how participants evaluate negotiators who deceptively (vs. genuinely) communicate anger or happiness, on the dimensions of morality, sociability, and competence. Study 1 employed a buyer/seller setting, Studies 2 and 3 employed an Ultimatum Bargaining Game (UBG). In all studies, participants learned a negotiator’s (the target’s) experienced and communicated emotions (anger or happiness), before evaluating the target. Across studies, targets were evaluated lower on morality if they deceptively (vs. genuinely) communicated anger or happiness. Notably, negotiators deceptively communicating anger were evaluated lower on morality and sociability but higher on competence than those deceptively communicating happiness. Studies 2 and 3 investigated behavioral consequences by examining whether in a future negotiation participants chose the target to be their opponent or representative. Results showed that for opponents, participants preferred targets who genuinely communicated happiness (vs. anger), which was associated with their perceived morality or sociability. For representatives, participants not only preferred targets who had genuinely communicated happiness (vs. anger), but also targets who had deceptively communicated anger (vs. happiness), which was associated with their perceived competence. These findings show that when evaluating deceptive (vs. genuine) communication strategies, people distinguish between morality, sociability, and competence. The importance they attach to these dimensions is also contingent on the behavioral decisions they face.

Past work suggests that emotion deception in negotiations – communicating a different emotion than experienced – is perceived negatively. We, however, argue that this depends on the type of emotion deception. We compared two emotion deception types – communicating anger while actually being happy, and communicating happiness while being angry – to genuine communications of happiness and anger. In three preregistered experiments (N = 500), participants played the role of employee or supervisor and negotiated with an opponent about salary raises. After their initial offer, participants learned their opponent’s experienced (happiness vs. anger) and communicated emotion (happiness vs. anger). Then, participants made their final demand and reported perceptions of their opponent’s limits and sacrifice. Results showed that participants perceived opponents who communicated genuine anger as having stricter limits and conceded more to them than to opponents using the other emotion communication types. Moreover, opponents who communicated happiness but experienced anger were perceived as making more of a sacrifice than opponents who communicated anger but experienced happiness. In Experiment 3, we also examined effects of emotion deception on non-negotiated outcomes, by assessing the likelihood to hand the opponent a year-end bonus. Participants were most likely to allocate the bonus to opponents that truthfully communicated happiness. Moreover, participants were more likely to allocate the bonus to opponents who communicated happiness but experienced anger than to opponents who communicated anger but experienced happiness. These findings extend social functional accounts of emotion communication, by showing that effects of emotion deception depend on the type of experienced and/or communicated emotions.

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.

The current research investigates the effects of exposure to information about the prevalence of sexism in society on women's perceptions, needs, expectations, and career motivation. We propose that such exposure to sexism prevalence may threaten women's fundamental need to belong, and induces perceptions of social exclusion. Study 1 provided correlational evidence that perceiving society as sexist relates to increased perceptions of being excluded. Three experimental studies demonstrated that exposure to information about sexism in the form of fictional research results (Study 2), or actual newspaper articles (Studies 3 and 4), increased women's experiences of social exclusion. Exposure to such information also lowered women's gender-related expectations of achieving their preferred position in society, and reduced career motivation. Together, the article provides insight in the experiential and motivational reactions to sexism in society. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

The functioning of social collectives hinges on the willingness of their members to cooperate with one another and to help those who are in need. Here we consider how such prosocial behavior is shaped by emotions. We offer an integrative review of theoretical arguments and empirical findings concerning how the experience of emotions influences people’s own prosocial behavior (intrapersonal effects) and how the expression of emotions influences others’ prosocial behavior (interpersonal effects). We identified research on five broad clusters of emotions associated with opportunity and affiliation (happiness, contentment, hope), appreciation and self-transcendence (gratitude, awe, elevation, compassion), distress and supplication (sadness, disappointment, fear, anxiety), dominance and status assertion (anger, disgust, contempt, envy, pride), and appeasement and social repair (guilt, regret, shame, embarrassment). Our review reveals notable differences between emotion clusters and between intrapersonal and interpersonal effects. Although some emotions promote prosocial behavior in the self and others, most emotions promote prosocial behavior either in the self (via their intrapersonal effects) or in others (via their interpersonal effects), suggesting trade-offs between the functionality of emotional experience and emotional expression. Moreover, interpersonal effects are modulated by the cooperative versus competitive nature of the situation. We discuss the emerging patterns from a social-functional perspective and conclude that understanding the role of emotion in prosociality requires joint attention to intrapersonal and interpersonal effects.

While a considerable body of literature has shown that leaving one's group is a negative experience that people tend to avoid, the current research focuses on the idea that on some occasions, leaving one's group can come with positive consequences. Across four experimental studies, we demonstrate that people's reactions to staying in versus leaving their group are modulated by their performance. Studies 1 and 2 showed that performing considerably below (vs. at the same level as) one's group members, can be an aversive experience that people prefer to avoid, even when this means being excluded by their fellow group members. Exclusion harmed low-performers' and equal-performers' feelings and need fulfilment equally, but low-performers still considered exclusion relatively relieving and preferable. They also experienced inclusion in the group as less positive than equal-performers. Studies 3 and 4 showed that low-performing participants were also relatively likely to leave the group when they had the chance. Although this resulted in participants' separation from the group, this had positive effects for them, as it restored their fundamental needs and improved their feelings, relative to when they were still part of the group.

Do people in need share less with others? And what if the recipient is in need too? In two experiments, we addressed these questions by testing whether fasting-induced and self-rated hunger influence allocations in a dictator game in which allocators distribute food (cookies) between themselves and a recipient. In line with rational choice theory, which posits that a deprived good should increase in value (Smith, 1759; Von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944), findings from the current studies consistently showed that participants shared fewer cookies when they were, and/or perceived themselves to be, in a food-deprived state. Across studies, participants moreover seemed to project their own hunger onto the recipient's state, as emotional perspective taking accounts propose, but this did not vary between fasting and control conditions, and did not translate into actual sharing differences, suggesting that these formed no basis for other-regarding decisions. Whether or not participants accounted for the recipient's hunger when redistributing foods, depended on whether they possessed actual knowledge of the recipient's deprivation state, such that participants engaged in greater sharing when they knew the recipient had been fasting (Study 2), but not in the absence of such knowledge (Study 1). Taken together, the results involving the need state of the recipient seem to provide most support for the need principle, that suggests that people share out of distributive justice considerations, where they take into account the recipient's need (Deutsch, 1975).