Conflict resolution research

Negotiation Research

Negotiation, the most heavily researched approach to conflict resolution, has mainly been studied in laboratory experiments, in which undergraduate participants are randomly assigned to conditions. These studies have mostly looked at antecedents of the strategies adopted by negotiators and the outcomes attained, including whether agreement is reached, the joint benefit to both parties, and the individual benefit to each party.

Negotiation Research Findings

Here are some of the more prominent findings from these studies (see Pruitt & Carnevale, 1993):

* Problem solving behavior, such as giving or requesting information about a party’s priorities among the issues, encourages high joint benefit.

* Contentious behavior, such as making threats or standing firm on one’s proposals, encourages failure to reach agreement or, if agreement is reached, low joint benefit.

* Conceding makes agreement more likely but favors the other party’s interests.

* Prosocial motivation (resulting, for example, from positive mood or the expectation of future interaction with the other party) encourages problem solving and high joint benefit and discourages contentious behavior, but only when resistance to yielding is high (De Dreu, Weingart, & Kwon, 2000).

* The party who makes the first offer tends to achieve greater benefit than the other party.

* Three states of mind discourage concession making: viewing concessions as producing loss rather than as foregoing gain; focusing attention on one’s goal rather than one’s limit (i.e., the alternative that is minimally tolerable); and adopting a fixed-pie perspective, in which one views the other’s gain as one’s loss, rather than an expandable pie perspective.

* Adopting any of the states of mind above diminishes the likelihood of agreement; but if agreement is reached, it increases the likelihood of winning, especially if the other party adopts the opposite state of mind (Thompson, Neale, & Sinaceur, 2004).

Cultural Differences in Negotiation Findings

Recent experiments have also found some cultural differences in negotiation behavior (Gelfand & Brett, 2004):

* Negotiators from individualistic cultures tend to take a more contentious approach, while those from collectivistic cultures are more concerned about maintaining positive relationships and hence more likely to cooperate (concede or engage in problem solving).

* Accountability to constituents encourages contentious behavior for individualists, it encourages cooperative behavior for collectivists.

* Research tells us that people with a high need for closure (for rapid decision making) tend to think and act in accustomed ways. It follows that high need for closure should accentuate contentious behavior in individualistic societies and cooperative behavior in collectivistic societies, an hypothesis that has received support.

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