The Role of Argument in Negotiation

The purpose of this paper is to show the pervasive, though often implicit, role of arguments in negotiation dialogue. This holds even for negotiations that start from a difference of interest such as mere bargaining through offers and counteroffers. But it certainly holds for negotiations that try to settle a difference of opinion on policy issues. It will be demonstrated how a series of offers and counteroffers in a negotiation dialogue contains a reconstructible series of implicit persuasion dialogues. The paper is a sequel to van Laar and Krabbe (2017), in which we showed that for some differences of opinion it may be reasonable to shift from persuasion dialogue, aimed at a resolution of the difference on the merits, to negotiation dialogue, aimed at compromise, whereas in the present paper we show that such a shift need not amount to the abandonment of argumentation. Our main aim in this paper as well as in the previous one is to contribute to the theory of argumentation within the context of negotiation and compromise formation.     

Affect in Dyadic Negotiation: A Model and Propositions

The topic of affect has been described as an important, but underexplored area of the social psychology of negotiation. In this paper we seek to advance thinking about affective processes in two-party negotiation through an integration and conceptual extension of existing research. We briefly review conceptualizations and operationalizations of affect, and highlight findings relevant to the social-cognitive underpinnings of negotiation. A dynamic model of affect in two-party negotiation analyzes the role of moods and emotions that bargainers bring to and evolve within the negotiation encounter. The model illustrates how affect states influence (and in some cases are influenced by) one's decision to negotiate, selection of an opponent, formulation of expectations and offers, choice of tactics used within bargaining, economic and social-cognitive outcomes, and proclivity to comply with settlement terms. We develop specific research propositions that describe these influences and discuss their implications for broader questions about the role of affect in bargaining.     

Negotiation as a form of persuasion: arguments in first offers

In this article we examined aspects of negotiation within a persuasion framework. Specifically, we investigated how the provision of arguments that justified the first offer in a negotiation affected the behavior of the parties, namely, how it influenced counteroffers and settlement prices. In a series of 4 experiments and 2 pilot studies, we demonstrated that when the generation of counterarguments was easy, negotiators who did not add arguments to their first offers achieved superior results compared with negotiators who used arguments to justify their first offer. We hypothesized and provided evidence that adding arguments to a first offer was likely to cause the responding party to search for counterarguments, and this, in turn, led him or her to present counteroffers that were further away from the first offer.     

Future Thinking in Disadvantaged Situations: The Role of Outcome Delays and Competitive Issues in Negotiation

Extant literature suggests that delaying the outcomes of negotiations can have salutary effects on the joint outcomes of participants. However, this literature has not examined the impact that outcome delays have on the success of individual negotiators. We argue that in situations where a player's preference on an issue involves a lack of legitimacy, an outcome delay may advantage the presentation of that issue. In addition, we suggest that this effect is more likely to be present in situations where competition is high, specifically, where the parties have few opportunities for cooperation. An experimental dyadic negotiation exercise involving 306 undergraduate participants was conducted to test these hypotheses. Results suggest that the introduction of an outcome delay helps to reduce the negative effects of a legitimacy disadvantage in the absence of alternate opportunities for collaboration.     

Starting high and ending with nothing: The role of anchors and power in negotiations

Most research suggests that negotiators gain value by making first offers in negotiations. The current research examines the proposition that extreme first offers offend their recipients and cause them to walk away, resulting in an impasse. Results across two experiments support this proposition. As a result, extreme offers can be risky: even though they can anchor counteroffers and final outcomes, bringing benefit to the offerer, they only do so when impasses are avoided. In addition, we find support for the proposition that power moderates the relationship between extreme offers and impasses: although low- and high-power negotiators are equally offended by extreme offers, it is the low-power negotiators who walk away from the negotiation.     

Conflict and Negotiation: Trends and Emerging Issues

Theory and research on dyadic conflict is traced from its historical roots in social exchange theory and interpersonal gaming to current concerns with the cognitive and tactical aspects of multiple issue bargaining and conflict in close personal relationships. This review examines the contributions of research with the Prisoner's Dilemma game, explicit two-person bargaining paradigms, and threat games, as well as work on representative negotiation and third-party intervention in conflict. The interplay of structural and motivational variables in the understanding of conflict and negotiation is emphasized. Criticisms of the typical theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of conflict are noted, especially the lack of general theory and the questionable representativeness of typical laboratory paradigms. Finally, recent research in integrative bargaining and entrapment is examined for insights concerning the active role the parties themselves play in the structuring of their conflict, and the implications of such a role for cognitive as well as motivational factors in conflict resolution.     

On the controllability of evaluative-priming effects: Some limits that are none

Two experiments examined recent claims of uncontrollability of the evaluative-priming effect. According to these claims, imposing an adaptive 600 ms response deadline prevents successful faking (Degner, 2009). Furthermore, strategic control attempts have been argued not to reduce the priming measure's sensitivity to spontaneous evaluations so that correlations of evaluative-priming effects with external criteria are not affected by attempts to fake (Bar-Anan, 2010). Here, we show that faking is possible even with an adaptive 600 ms response deadline when faking instructions do not conflict with speed pressures imposed thereby (Experiments 1 and 2). In addition, suitable faking instructions substantially affect the predictive validity of priming effects in terms of their correlations with (non-faked) self-report measures and the Implicit Association Test (Experiment 2). The previous claims about the uncontrollability of the evaluative-priming effect may thus have been premature.     

调节聚焦对期限效果的影响

结合调节聚焦探讨了期限的时长、结果框架及效价对期限效果的影响。结果表明,防御聚焦个体认为期限的阻碍效果更大,且调节聚焦对前述变量与期限效果的关系具有调节作用:4分钟期限中防御聚焦组认为期限的阻碍效果更大,8分钟期限中则相反,12和16分钟期限中均无显著差异;收益框架下促进聚焦组认为期限对任务表现的阻碍作用更大,促进聚焦组在正效价条件下认为收益框架下期限对策略使用的阻碍作用更大,但在负效价条件下则相反。     

Honesty pays: On the benefits of having and disclosing information in coalition bargaining

People typically think of negotiations as competitive, which often leads them to engage in secrecy and even deception. In three experiments we show that this approach can backfire in coalition bargaining. Results show that, even though bargainers with an outcome advantage only obtain favorable outcomes when this information is public, they rarely choose to reveal this information. Fairness motivations fueled decisions to reveal this information and make attractive offers whereas self-interest fueled decisions not to reveal and make unattractive offers. Finally, perspective taking increased proselfs' inclinations to keep their advantage private whereas it increased prosocials' inclinations to reveal. These findings suggest that many people are not naturally inclined to reveal private information when they have an outcome advantage, but that fairness motives encourage revelation and, ironically, increase revealers' outcomes in coalition bargaining. Thus, in this context, honesty pays.     

Myopic perception of having a deadline in negotiations: An anchoring effect due to question order

In negotiations, people tend to perceive a deadline as more detrimental to themselves than to their opponents. This phenomenon is termed myopic perception. The present research proposes that myopic perception can be understood as a result of an anchoring effect due to the question order used in probing the perception of a deadline. When people estimate deal prices before rating the influence of a deadline, their judgements are anchored on their negotiation outcomes, making their perception egocentric, which leads to myopic perception. As a result, myopic perception was hypothesized to be reduced by reversing the above question order to change the respondents' judgement anchor from negotiation outcomes to negotiation procedures. In Study 1, myopic perception disappeared when participants rated the general influence of a deadline before estimating deal price in a negotiation scenario. In Study 2, pairs of participants negotiated under a tight deadline. Myopic perception of a deadline was manipulated before the negotiation. Dyads without myopic perception had a smaller discrepancy in reservation price. However, myopic perception had no effect on impasse rates or final deal prices. The results are discussed with respect to behavioural forecasting and practical implications of myopic perception.     

谈判者第一次出价对谈判破裂的影响：角色的调节作用

谈判者在大多数情况下都希望能顺利达成协议,但很多时候多种因素使得谈判进入僵局或者破裂。本研究利用模拟谈判的手段,综合考察了第一次出价对谈判破裂的影响。很多谈判者出于害怕吃亏或者希望获得更多收益,向对手提出较高的第一次开价。研究一证明第一次出价越高,谈判越容易失败。有趣的是,第一次开价的高低与谈判破裂之间的关系会受到谈判角色的影响,谈判者的权力不同会使得他们的第一次开价具有不同的作用。研究二证实,当谈判双方权力不对等时,第一次出价对谈判破裂的负面作用受到了权力的影响。弱者的第一次出价越高,谈判越容易破裂。中介分析表明,当弱者出价较高时,容易让对方感到竞争性过强,因此不愿意达成协议。本研究不仅丰富了谈判破裂和第一次出价的理论研究,而且对于谈判者具有实践意义     

Language Use and Coalition Formation in Multiparty Negotiations

The alignment of bargaining positions is crucial to a successful negotiation. Prior research has shown that similarity in language use is indicative of the conceptual alignment of interlocutors. We use latent semantic analysis to explore how the similarity of language use between negotiating parties develops over the course of a three‐party negotiation. Results show that parties that reach an agreement show a gradual increase in language similarity over the course of the negotiation. Furthermore, reaching the most financially efficient outcome is dependent on similarity in language use between the parties that have the most to gain from such an outcome.     

Choosing the path to bargaining power: an empirical comparison of BATNAs and contributions in negotiation

Although the negotiations literature identifies a variety of approaches for improving one's power position, the relative benefits of these approaches remain largely unexplored. The empirical study presented in this article begins to address this issue by examining how the size of the bargaining zone affects the relative benefit of an advantage in one's BATNA (i.e., having a better alternative than one's counterpart) versus contribution (i.e., contributing more to the relationship than one's counterpart) for negotiator performance. Results indicate that whereas BATNAs exerted a stronger effect on resource allocations than contributions when the bargaining zone was small, an advantage in contributions exerted a stronger effect on resource allocations than BATNAs when the bargaining zone was large. These findings provide needed insight and supporting evidence for how to alter one's power relationship in negotiation.     

The sunny side of fairness: preference for fairness activates reward circuitry (and disregarding unfairness activates self-control circuitry)

Little is known about the positive emotional impact of fairness or the process of resolving conflict between fairness and financial interests. In past research, fairness has covaried with monetary payoff, such that the mental processes underlying preference for fairness and those underlying preference for greater monetary outcome could not be distinguished. We examined self-reported happiness and neural responses to fair and unfair offers while controlling for monetary payoff. Compared with unfair offers of equal monetary value, fair offers led to higher happiness ratings and activation in several reward regions of the brain. Furthermore, the tendency to accept unfair proposals was associated with increased activity in right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a region involved in emotion regulation, and with decreased activity in the anterior insula, which has been implicated in negative affect. This work provides evidence that fairness is hedonically valued and that tolerating unfair treatment for material gain involves a pattern of activation resembling suppression of negative affect.     

Creative People Create Values: Creativity and Positive Arousal in Negotiations

Most negotiations are ill-structured situations, and the ability to identify novel options is likely to be crucial for success. This study, therefore, examined how creativity impacts negotiation processes and outcomes, and how this effect is moderated by positive arousal. The negotiators’ creative personality and their state of positive arousal were measured before they participated in a simulated negotiation, with the results demonstrating that the level of creativity in negotiation dyads was positively related to the negotiators’ joint outcome. Negotiators in high creativity dyads searched for more information by asking questions about priorities and were less narrowly focused by providing fewer single-issue offers than negotiators in low creativity dyads. Positive arousal did not affect outcome directly, but moderated the effect of creativity on joint outcomes; the effect of creativity was strongest under high levels of positive arousal. The discussion section emphasizes that future research may find creativity to have even more of a positive effect when negotiations become more complex.     

The effect of encoding variables on the free recall of words and action events

On the basis of previously determined properties, it was hypothesized that, whereas the free recall of words is a strategic memory test, the free recall of action events in the form of tasks performed by the subject is nonstrategic. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments. In Experiment 1, some presented items were designated as being more important to remember than others. Although this encoding manipulation had a marked effect on word recall, its effect on task recall was minimal In Experiment 2, the encoding impact of events was measured by having subjects rate, during presentation, how likely they were to recall each event on a subsequent test. The ratings showed good predictive power for the recall of words, but not of action events. These results were accepted as further support for a strategic/nonstrategic distinction between word and task recall.     

Team negotiation: social, epistemic, economic, and psychological consequences of subgroup conflict

Large collectives (e.g., organizations, political parties, nations) are seldom unitary players. Rather, they consist of different subgroups that often have conflicting interests. Nonetheless, negotiation research consistently regards negotiating teams, who represent these collectives, as monolithic parties with uniform interests. This article integrates concepts from social psychology, management, political science, and behavioral game theory to explore the effects of subgroup conflict on team negotiation. Specifically, the present research introduced a conflict of interests within negotiating teams and investigated how this internal conflict affects the outcome of the negotiation between teams. An experiment with 80 four-person teams found that conflict between subgroups had a detrimental effect on the performance of negotiating teams. This research also employed a recent model of motivated information processing in groups to investigate possible processes underlying the effect of subgroup conflict on team negotiation.     

Reversing the Gender Gap in Negotiations: An Exploration of Stereotype Regeneration

We examine how gender stereotypes affect performance in mixed-gender negotiations. We extend recent work demonstrating that stereotype activation leads to a male advantage and a complementary female disadvantage at the bargaining table (Kray, Thompson, & Galinsky, 2001). In the present investigation, we regenerate the stereotype of effective negotiators by associating stereotypically feminine skills with negotiation success. In Experiment 1, women performed better in mixed-gender negotiations when stereotypically feminine traits were linked to successful negotiating, but not when gender-neutral traits were linked to negotiation success. Gender differences were mediated by the performance expectations and goals set by negotiators. In Experiment 2, we regenerated the stereotype of effective negotiators by linking stereotypically masculine or feminine traits with negotiation ineffectiveness. Women outperformed men in mixed-gender negotiations when stereotypically masculine traits were linked to poor negotiation performance, but men outperformed women when stereotypically feminine traits were linked to poor negotiation performance. Implications for stereotype threat theory and negotiations are discussed.