Simone Moran

Experience in Integrative Negotiations: What Needs to Be Learned?

In this research we focus on the roles of experience and understanding in fostering integrative negotiation performance. We report on two experiments in which we distinguish between understanding opponents’ general priorities among issues versus understanding their speciWc gains for particular oVers. Although experience enhanced integrative performance even in the absence of understanding, we found that understanding the speciWc gains had an incremental eVect on performance. We conclude that while generally acknowledging opponents’ interests is not suYcient, the additional inferential step of assessing their speciWc gains throughout the negotiation process is advantageous.

Effects of optimism on creativity under approach and avoidance motivation

Focusing on avoiding failure or negative outcomes (avoidance motivation) can undermine creativity, due to cognitive (e.g., threat appraisals), affective (e.g., anxiety), and volitional processes (e.g., low intrinsic motivation). This can be problematic for people who are avoidance motivated by nature and in situations in which threats or potential losses are salient. Here, we review the relation between avoidance motivation and creativity, and the processes underlying this relation. We highlight the role of optimism as a potential remedy for the creativity undermining effects of avoidance motivation, due to its impact on the underlying processes. Optimism, expecting to succeed in achieving success or avoiding failure, may reduce negative effects of avoidance motivation, as it eases threat appraisals, anxiety, and disengagement—barriers playing a key role in undermining creativity. People experience these barriers more under avoidance than under approach motivation, and beneficial effects of optimism should therefore be more pronounced under avoidance than approach motivation. Moreover, due to their eagerness, approach motivated people may even be more prone to unrealistic over-optimism and its negative consequences.

When Better is Worse: Envy and the Use of Deception in Negotiations

In this paper we describe the influence of envy on the use of deception. We find that individuals who envy a counterpart are more likely to deceive them than are individuals who do not envy their counterpart. Across both a scenario and a laboratory study, we explore the influence of envy in a negotiation setting. Negotiations represent a domain in which social comparisons are prevalent and deception poses a particularly important concern. In our studies, we induce envy by providing participants with upward social comparison information. We find that upward social comparisons predictably trigger envy, and that envy promotes deception by increasing perceived gains and decreasing psychological costs of engaging in deceptive behavior. We discuss implications of our results with respect to impression management and emotional intelligence as well as the role of emotions in ethical decision making and negotiations.

The limits of shape constancy: Point-to-point mapping of perspective projections of flat figures

The present experiments investigate point-to-point mapping of perspective transformations of 2D outline figures under diverse viewing conditions: binocular free viewing, monocular perspective with 2D cues masked by an optic tunnel, and stereoptic viewing through an optic tunnel. The first experiment involved upright figures, and served to determine baseline point-to-point mapping accuracy, which was found to be very good. Three shapes were used: square, circle and irregularly round. The main experiment, with slanted figures, involved only two shapes--square and irregularly shaped--showed at several slant degrees. Despite the accumulated evidence for shape constancy when the outline of perspective projections is considered, metric perception of the inner structure of such projections was quite limited. Systematic distortions were found, especially with more extreme slants, and attributed to the joint effect of several factors: anchors, 3D information, and slant underestimation. Contradictory flatness cues did not detract from performance, while stereoptic information improved it.

When Feeling Skillful Impairs Coordination in a Lottery Selection Task

Choosing a major field of study to secure a good job after graduation is a tacit coordination problem that requires considering others’ choices. We examine how feeling skillful, either induced (Experiment 1) or measured (Experiment 2), affects coordination in this type of task. In both experiments participants chose between two lotteries, one offering a larger prize than the other. Participants’ entry into the chosen lottery was either related or unrelated to their skill, with the final prize allocated randomly to one of the entrants in each lottery. Importantly, across conditions skill was irrelevant to choosing between lotteries. Notwithstanding, when skill was related to determining lottery entrants, participants who felt highly skillful chose the high prize lottery excessively. Results further suggest that this stems from high confidence in self skill, rather than incorrect expectations regarding others.

Getting More out of Analogical Training in Negotiations: Learning Core Principles for Creating Value

The present research adapts analogical training to teach negotiators broad thought processes for creating value. Recently, specific analogical training, wherein negotiators draw analogies between different cases involving the same strategy, was shown to be effective for learning and transferring specific value-creating strategies. The current results suggest that such specific learning may have limited generalizability to other value-creating processes. Diverse analogical training, wherein negotiators compare several different value-creating strategies, was shown to be more effective for learning underlying value-creating principles. This method facilitated transfer to a very distinctive task and improved performance on a variety of value-creating strategies, including some never previously encountered. The improved performance was also accompanied by a deeper understanding of thepotential to create value.

The Effects of Reflection and Motivational Goals on the Transfer of Skills in Integrative Negotiations

The present research deals with teaching negotiators to improve their skills for creating value. Building upon the literature in cognitive and educational psychology, we examined the effects of reflection and of achievement motivational goals (Learning versus Performance) on the transfer of integrative negotiation skills. Participants first engaged in repeated negotiations within an unchanging market simulation and then proceeded to negotiate a more complex integrative negotiation task. We found reflection to be beneficial for learning. Experience accompanied by subsequent reflection enhanced integrative performance in the transfer task more than experience without reflection. Contrary to our expectations, participants that were assigned learning goals did not improve their performance on a transfer task compared to participants that were assigned performance goals.