E. Van de Vliert

Chinese and Dutch Interpretations of Supervisory Feedback

Ina Chinese-Dutchscenariostudy(N = 433students), the authorsinvestigated subordinates’covert reactions to supervisory feedback. The study consisted of a 2 (personal orientation: collectivist vs. individualist) × 2 (performance perspective: collective vs. individual) × 2 (feedback favorability: positive vs. negative) completely crossed factorial design. The dependent variables were feedback quality, relational quality, emotional responses, and behavioral intentions. The authors found that feedback quality and relational quality tend to be higher for matched collectivist—collective and individualist—individual situations than for mismatched situations. They also found that collective situations enhance constructive behavioral intentions more than do individual situations and that positive feedback produces better information, better relationships, more pleasant emotions, and more constructive behavioral intentions than does equivalent negative feedback.

Cooperation and Competition as Partners

This review addresses the manifestations and consequences of interpersonal cooperation and competition in interdependent, organizational settings. It challenges the applicability of Deutschs (1949, 1973) game-based cooperation–competition theory. Rather than separate motives and separate behaviours having separate effects, cooperation and competition seem to refer to entwined motives and behaviours moderating each others impact on dyadic or group effectiveness. The field of cooperation–competition in organizations is in need of a shift of perspective, as well as a revised research agenda including nation-referenced studies. Nation-referenced research places its results in the context of a countrys cooperative and competitive cultural values and practices, with mean atmospheric temperature as a rough indicator of the degrees of cooperation and competition to be expected.

Outcome frames in bilateral negotiation: Resistance to concession making and Frame-Adoption

This chapter reviews research and theory concerned with outcome frames in negotiation—the negotiators conception of the dispute as involving gains (gain frame) or losses (loss frame). We argue that because losses are more aversive than equivalent gains are attractive, loss framed negotiators should display greater resistance to concession making and settle less easily than negotiators with a gain frame. A review of frame research supports this argument. Furthermore, we propose that during negotiations, disputants communicate about their frame, and tend to adopt the frame communicated by their opponent. Several experiments are reviewed that show this frame adoption effect to be likely especially when the negotiators themselves have a gain rather than a loss frame. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the importance of outcome frames to the escalation of social conflict.