Abstract
A negotiator’s own power and their counterpart’s emotional reaction to the negotiation both influence the outcome of negotiations. The present research addressed the question of their relative importance. On one hand, social power should be potent regardless of the other’s emotions. On the other hand, the counterpart’s emotional reactions inform about the ongoing state of the negotiation, and as such are more diagnostic than the more distal power cue. In a simulated computer mediated negotiation, 248 participants assumed the role of a vendor of computerized avionics test equipment and their objective was to negotiate the price, the warranty period, and the number of software updates that the buyer will receive free of charge. Participants negotiated the sale after being primed with either high or low power or not primed at all (control condition). They received information that their counterpart was either happy or angry or emotionally neutral. The findings showed that even though power was an important factor at the start of negotiations, the informative value of emotion information took precedence over time. This implies that emotional information may erase any advantage that counterparts have in a negotiation thanks to their higher social power.
Highlights
A negotiator’s own power and their counterpart’s emotional reaction to the negotiation both influence the outcome of negotiations
To assess the effect of the negotiation partners' emotion expression and participant's social power on the negotiation results, a 3 x 3 x 6 a mixed factors ANOVA was conducted on the total number of points obtained at each of the six negotiation rounds
The goal of the present study was to assess the impact of the participant's social power and the emotional reactions of their counterpart to the participants' offers on the outcome of a negotiation
Summary
A negotiator’s own power and their counterpart’s emotional reaction to the negotiation both influence the outcome of negotiations. Previous research, acknowledging the potential link between these factors in negotiations, has shown that the extent to which negotiators consider the emotions expressed by their counterpart during the negotiation depends on the decisional power of the perceiver (van Kleef, De Dreu, Pietroni, & Manstead, 2006). The counterpart’s emotions were taken into account in situations of high dependency, either because negotiators did not have an alternative to the negotiation, or because they are low in organizational status, that is, held a low level position in the organization (van Kleef, De Dreu, Pietroni, et al, 2006).Yet, this raises the question of the relative importance of emotions and power for the negotiation. Based on the rationale delineated above, we predicted that emotions, being a more proximal signal of the way the negotiation unfolds, will overpower the importance of the negotiator's social power as this is a more distal cue and less predictive of what is expected to happen at specific points in the negotiation
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