The Role of Regulatory Focus and Emotion Recognition in Cross-Cultural Negotiation

Abstract

Prior research on cross-cultural negotiation has emphasized the cognitive and the behavioral elements. This study takes a different perspective and presents a motivation-emotion model of cross-cultural negotiation. We propose that the cultural differences in chronic regulatory focus will lead to cultural biases in emotion recognition, which in turn will affect negotiation behaviors. People are inclined to perceive and behave in ways that enhance regulatory fit. So, Westerners and East Asians, who each have different chronic regulatory focus, interpret the negotiation situation differently in order to increase their regulatory fit. Specifically, we demonstrate that when the emotion of the opponent is ambiguous, people from different cultural backgrounds show cultural biases in emotion recognition, concentrating on the emotion that fits their chronic regulatory focus. Then, using the Emotion As Social Information (EASI) model, we discuss how these cultural biases in emotion recognition can affect people's negotiation behaviors. Finally, we end our argument by introducing some possible moderators of the motivation-emotion model like power and emotion recognition accuracy.