Jared R. Curhan

What Do People Value When They Negotiate? Mapping the Domain of Subjective Value in Negotiation

Four studies support the development and validation of a framework for understanding the range of social psychological outcomes valued subjectively as consequences of negotiations. Study 1 inductively elicited and coded elements of subjective value among students, community members, and practitioners, revealing 20 categories that theorists in Study 2 sorted into 4 underlying subconstructs: Feelings About the Instrumental Outcome, Feelings About the Self, Feelings About the Negotiation Process, and Feelings About the Relationship. Study 3 proposed a new Subjective Value Inventory (SVI) and confirmed its 4-factor structure. Study 4 presents convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity data for the SVI. Indeed, subjective value was a better predictor than economic outcomes of future negotiation decisions. Results suggest the SVI is a promising tool to systematize and encourage research on subjective outcomes of negotiation.

Negotiators Who Give Too Much: Unmitigated Communion, Relational Anxieties, and Economic Costs in Distributive and Integrative Bargaining

A series of studies found that the personality dimension of unmitigated communion (H. L. Fritz & V. S. Helgeson, 1998) leads negotiators to make concessions to avoid straining relationships. Results indicate that even within the population of successful business executives, this dimension of relational anxiety can be identified distinctly from more general relational orientations, such as agreeableness, and that it distinctly predicts accommodating tendencies in everyday conflicts. In economic games, unmitigated communion predicts giving in contexts in which the relational norm of reciprocity applies, but not in contexts tapping instrumental or altruistic motives for cooperation. In distributive negotiations, the effect of unmitigated communion in lowering a negotiators outcome is mediated by prenegotiation anxieties about relational strain and plans to make large concessions if needed to avoid impasse (lower reservation points). In integrative negotiations, high unmitigated communion on both sides of the negotiation dyad results in relational accommodation, evidenced by decreased success in maximizing economic joint gain but increased subjective satisfaction with the relationship.

Emotional intelligence and counterpart mood induction in a negotiation

Purpose – This paper aims to identify whether emotional intelligence relates to counterpart outcome satisfaction in negotiation contexts.Design/methodology/approach – A negotiation simulation and a pre‐established measure of emotional intelligence were employed.Findings – In Study 1, multi‐level models revealed that a participants ability to understand emotion positively predicted his or her counterparts outcome satisfaction. Study 2 replicates and extends this finding by showing the counterparts outcome satisfaction, assessment of liking, and desire to negotiate again with the participant.Practical implications – The mechanisms identifying how participants with high levels of understanding emotion induced their counterparts with positive affect were not examined.Originality/value – This is the first empirical article to show a relationship between emotional intelligence and counterpart outcome satisfaction in a negotiation context.

Parallel and Divergent Predictors of Objective and Subjective Value in Negotiation

The negotiation field has been dominated by a focus on objective value, or economic outcomes, with relatively less attention paid to subjective value, or social psychological outcomes. This chapter proposes a framework that highlights the duality of negotiation outcomes by identifying predictors of both objective and subjective value. Whereas some predictors tend to have parallel effects, benefiting objective and subjective value in tandem, other predictors tend to have divergent effects, benefiting objective value while simultaneously undermining subjective value, or vice versa. We further distinguish between predictors typically outside of the negotiator’s control, such as personality traits and individual differences, versus predictors typically within the negotiator’s control, such as behaviors and strategies. We offer twelve examples of predictors that illustrate this new framework, with the aim of advising individuals on how best to manage both objective and subjective value, thereby achieving peak performance in negotiations.

Why are Some Negotiators Better than Others? Opening the Black Box of Bargaining Behaviors

The authors address the longstanding mystery of individual differences in negotiation performance. Using Kenny’s (1994) Social Relations Model to examine the role of individual consistency in this dyadic process, analyses showed 52% of the variance in performance resulted from individual differences. Beyond demonstrating consistency, coding systems were used to examine transcripts, linguistic style, and nonverbal behavior in order to ‘open the black box’ and understand what makes some negotiators better than others. With hypotheses grounded in Behavioral Negotiation Theory and Interpersonal Theory, results showed that consistently great negotiators differed substantially from consistently poor negotiators in their behavioral profiles. Limitations and future directions for reinvigorating research in this area are discussed.

On the Relative Importance of Individual-Level Characteristics and Dyadic Interaction Effects in Distributive Negotiations: Variance Partitioning Evidence from a Twins Study

Negotiations are inherently dyadic. Negotiators’ individual-level characteristics may not only make them perform better or worse in general, but also may make them particularly well- or poorly-suited to negotiate with a particular counterpart. The present research estimates the extent to which performance in a distributive negotiation is affected by (1) the negotiators’ individual-level characteristics and (2) dyadic interaction effects that are defined by the unique pairings between the negotiators and their counterparts. Because negotiators cannot interact multiple times without carryover effects, we estimated the relative importance of these factors with a new methodology that used twin siblings as stand-ins for one another. Participants engaged in a series of one-on-one negotiations with counterparts while, elsewhere, their co-twins engaged in the same series of one-on-one negotiations with the co-twins of those counterparts. In these data, dyadic interaction effects explained more variation in negotiation economic outcomes than did individual differences, whereas individual differences explain more than twice as much of the variation in subjective negotiation outcomes than did dyadic interaction effects. These results suggest dyadic interaction effects represent an understudied area for future research, particularly with regard to the economic outcomes of negotiations.

The Dark Side of Subjective Value in Sequential Negotiations: The Mediating Role of Pride and Anger.

Scholars who study negotiation increasingly recognize the importance of social context, seeing negotiations not merely as 1-shot interactions but as influenced by what came before. Under this longitudinal conceptualization of negotiation, a number of recent studies demonstrate that social psychological outcomes from prior negotiations are positively related to economic performance in subsequent negotiations when negotiating repeatedly with the same counterpart. In this report, we investigate a counterexample in the context of “sequential negotiations,” which we define as multiple negotiation sessions that occur within a short time frame but facing different counterparts in each session. We theorize, in sequential negotiations, that subjective value from 1 negotiation should be negatively related to objective outcomes in a subsequent negotiation because of spillover effects of incidental anger and pride. We test this model in 2 studies: a multiround lab study with a student sample and a longitudinal field study with employees negotiating as part of their jobs. Results from both studies support the hypothesized negative relationship between subjective value from an initial negotiation and the objective outcome from a subsequent negotiation with a different counterpart. The mediating role of pride is supported partially in Study 1 and fully in Study 2, whereas the mediating role of anger is not supported in either study. We discuss implications for negotiation theory and practice.