Terri R. Kurtzberg

The finer points of lying online: e-mail versus pen and paper.

The authors present 3 experimental studies that build on moral disengagement theory by exploring lying in online environments. Findings indicate that, when e-mail is compared with pen and paper communication media (both of which are equal in terms of media richness, as both are text only), people are more willing to lie when communicating via e-mail than via pen and paper and feel more justified in doing so. The findings were consistent whether the task assured participants that their lie either would or would not be discovered by their counterparts. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Humor as a relationship-building tool in online negotiations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of humor in online negotiations and assess whether humor can act as a bridge for the otherwise relationship‐poor experience of negotiating via e‐mail.Design/methodology/approach – Two experimental studies are conducted, using 122 executive MBA students and 216 MBA students respectively.Findings – Study 1 demonstrates that beginning an e‐mail transaction with humor results in: increased trust and satisfaction levels; higher joint gains for the dyad; and higher individual gains for the party who initiated the humorous event. Analyses reveals that it is the exploration of compatible issues (as opposed to effective tradeoffs) – that increased the level of joint gain. Study 2 demonstrates that first offers in a purely distributive negotiation are more likely to be within the bargaining zone when e‐negotiations are initiated with humor, and the resulting final settlements in the humor condition are also more equally distributed between parties (more of ...

Fairness judgments and counterfactual thinking: pricing goods versus services

Purpose – This paper aims to propose and empirically document the idea that people’s perceptions of having been treated fairly depend, in part, on whether the explanation provided to them of a product’s pricing is primarily based on the costs of labor (a service) versus materials (goods). Because materials are more fixed and tangible than the effort of labor, it is argued that people will have fewer counterfactual thoughts about how things could have been different with the cost of materials than those associated with labor. This has implications for fairness judgments more generally, as it suggests that people may be uneven in which types of data they attend to when making fairness judgments. Three experiments are presented that empirically test the relationship between the salience of goods versus services in the price paid and the resulting perceptions of fairness. Findings confirm that thoughts of money spent on a service were associated with lesser feelings of fairness than were thoughts of money spe...

High Tech Versus High Touch: Comparing Electronic and Hard-Copy Gift Cards

Previous research in the area of how individuals respond to hard-copy versus electronic communications indicates inconsistent results. Although media richness theory suggests that there is no theoretical distinction between physical, hard-copy and electronic, text-based communications, other research has shown that an individual’s response varies depending on the type of communication. The present research explores the reaction to unexpected opportunities as a function of how the communications are received—either via email or as a hard-copy. Results indicate that participants were equally satisfied to receive either an electronic or a physical gift certificate; however, they redeemed them in unequal amounts. Participants who received a physical gift card were more likely to redeem their gifts and were more likely to spend a greater amount of the total gift card than those who received an electronic one.

Affective Displays in E-Mail Communication: Evidence from the Lab and the Field

Abstract This chapter explores how electronic affective displays may influence individual perceptions, behavior and performance by conducting an exploratory analysis using a sample of real work emails (study 1), along with a laboratory experiment (study 2). The findings from both studies indicate that positive affective displays may have a stronger impact on individual perceptions (study 1) and invoke greater reciprocity from electronic partners (study 2) than negative affective displays. Moreover, some interesting gender effects with respect to affective displays and individual negotiation performance are observed. The implications for the field, along with limitations of the current research, are discussed.