Victoria Husted Medvec’s research while affiliated with Northwestern University and other places

The tension that negotiators face between claiming and creating value is particularly apparent when exchanging offers. We tested whether presenting a choice among first offers (Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers; MESOs) reduces this negotiator dilemma and increases economic and relational outcomes. Six experiments comparing MESOs to a single package-offer revealed three effects. First, MESOs produced stronger anchors and better outcomes for the offerer because recipients perceived MESOs as a more sincere attempt at reaching an agreement (agreement sincerity). Second, MESOs yielded greater joint outcomes because they were probabilistically more likely to include an economically attractive starting point for recipients (initial recipient-value). Third, MESOs allowed the offerer to secure a cooperative reputation and created a more cooperative negotiation climate. Negotiators who offered MESOs were able to claim and create more economic and relational value. MESOs reduced the negotiator dilemma for offerers by also reducing it for recipients. Weblinks in the appendix give access to supplementary materials, analyses, and data.

The present research shows that managers communicate negative feedback ineffectively because they suffer from transparency illusions that cause them to overestimate how accurately employees perceive their feedback. We propose that these illusions emerge because managers are insufficiently motivated to engage in effortful thinking, which reduces the accuracy with which they communicate negative feedback to employees. Six studies (N=1,954) using actual performance appraisals within an organization and role plays with MBA students, undergraduates, and online participants show that transparency illusions are stronger when feedback is negative (Studies 1-2), that they are not driven by employee bias (Study 3), and occur because managers are insufficiently motivated to be accurate (Studies 4a-c). In addition, these studies demonstrate that transparency illusions are driven by more indirect communication by the manager and how different interventions can be used to mitigate these effects (Studies 4a-c). An internal meta-analysis including 11 studies from the file drawer (N=2,082) revealed a moderate effect size (d=.43) free of publication bias.

This article provides an answer to the question of why negative feedback in organizational settings is often perceived more positively than intended. Past research has primarily focused on empathic buffering and conflict avoidance to explain why feedback inflation occurs. We argue that these accounts are incomplete and propose that there is a disconnect between the message the evaluator intends to send and the message received by the person being evaluated. This disconnect occurs because the sender suffers from a widespread egocentric bias, the illusion of transparency, which suggests that people insufficiently adjust from their internal experiences and thus believe that their feelings, thoughts, and behavior are as apparent to others as they are to them. We test our theory in the context of performance appraisals using a manager-employee paradigm. Across four studies employing different scenarios, performance measures, and samples, we demonstrate that managers consistently suffered from illusory feelings of transparency and underestimated how positively employees understood their negative feedback. We rule out the possibility that employees misinterpreted the negative feedback and show that managers predicted more accurately how the employee would interpret the feedback as it became more positive. Finally, we propose a theoretically motivated intervention: managers no longer suffered from illusory feelings of transparency when they were asked to consider arguments at odds with their egocentric views, because doing so reduced their self-focus. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for delivering performance feedback in organizations, the illusion of transparency, and social cognition.

Two quantitative meta-analyses examined how the presence of visual channels, vocal channels, and synchronicity influences the quality of outcomes in negotiations and group decision making. A qualitative review of the literature found that the effects of communication channels vary widely and that existing theories do not sufficiently account for these contradictory findings. To parsimoniously encompass the full range of existing data, the authors created the communication orientation model, which proposes that the impact of communication channels is shaped by communicators' orientations to cooperate or not. Two meta-analyses-conducted separately for negotiations and decision making-provide strong support for this model. Overall, the presence of communication channels (a) increased the achievement of high-quality outcomes for communicators with a neutral orientation, (b) did not affect the outcomes for communicators with a cooperative orientation, but (c) hurt communicators' outcomes with a noncooperative orientation. Tests of cross-cultural differences in each meta-analysis further supported the model: for those with a neutral orientation, the beneficial effects of communication channels were weaker within East Asian cultures (i.e., Interdependent and therefore more predisposed towards cooperation) than within Western cultures (i.e., Independent).

Previous research has argued that people exclude others in multiparty negotiations when their inclusion does not increase their payoffs. However, the majority of this research has been conducted in settings where participants do not interact person-to-person or where they communicate through highly restricted means. We argue that this view on exclusion needs to be modified and propose that communication can induce cooperation and thereby decrease exclusion from coalition agreements in multiparty negotiations. Data from two experiments examine how an opportunity to detect others' emotions, words, and behavior affects cooperation and exclusion in multiparty negotiations. Study 1 found that negotiators who communicate face-to-face or in the same (chat) room are less likely to exclude others from coalition agreements than negotiators who communicate in private and with computer mediated technology. Study 2 replicated this effect and also demonstrated that these effects are due to greater cooperation.

This research explores the impact of dyadic side conversations on group norms within three- and four-person groups. The authors propose a link between dyadic communication and group norms such that the absence of dyadic communication enhances a norm of group unity, whereas its presence enhances a norm of faction-forming. In two studies, we demonstrate that the presence of dyadic communication opportunities can both help and hurt group performance and that this depends on a fit between the content of the norm and the wider social context. In negotiation tasks that benefit from group unity, the absence of dyadic communication results in a stronger focus on the group and its future as well as increased group performance. However, in problem-solving tasks that benefit from faction-forming, the mere presence of dyadic communication opportunities leads to increased openness to unique information, disagreement, and group performance.

In this paper, we found that fairness judgments in intergenerational allocation decisions depend on (1) individuals’ position in the intergenerational sequence (i.e., whether they are in the preceding or succeeding generation), (2) the amount of uncertainty about the effect of the preceding generation’s decisions on the succeeding one, and (3) whether the preceding generation is primed with power. We found that both power priming and greater levels of uncertainty about the future consequences of present decisions can elicit stewardship attitudes, which may temper self-interested behavior on the part of the preceding generation. Our data also indicate that the nature of the uncertainty is important; it is not just a matter of how much future generations will be affected, but also whether or not they will be affected at all by the decisions of earlier generations. Our findings help to explain (1) how intergenerational inequities can occur even when people are explicitly focused on achieving fair allocations of resources between generations, and (2) how social responsibility concerns can motivate intergenerational beneficence in the face of intergenerational conflict.

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Previous research on coalition formation has argued that people exclude others to maximize their own payoff. However, the majority of this research has been conducted in settings where participants do not interact person-to-person or where they communicate through highly restricted means. We argue that this view on exclusion needs to be modified to allow for richer means of communication and interaction during multiparty negotiations. Data of two experiments are designed to examine how various communication settings shape a sense of awareness and unity within a group and influence coalition formation. Study 1 showed that negotiators with enhanced communication awareness display more positive emotions, use more inclusive tactics, and exclude each other less often from final agreements than negotiators with diminished awareness. Study 2 replicated this effect and showed that the opportunity to literally hear and see each other further increases communication awareness and decreases exclusionary behavior.

Abstract We present an experimental approach to study the micro-dynamicsof coalition formation in an unrestricted bargaining environment. We first show that negotiators use a variant of proto- coalition bargaining to come to a multi-party agreement. We then investigate the hypothesis that coalition bargaining under majority rule may leadto inefficiencies as agents are unable to effectively commit,to preliminary agreements and are therefore inclined to accept inferior allocations. The lack of commitment devices requires establishing mutual trust between the negotiators to reach a stable agreement. We conjecture that negotiators establish such trust through the use of various verbal and non-verbal messages. Bymanipulating,the communication channels used during the negotiations we can show that restrictions in the communication