Regulating emotions in negotiation

"Regulating emotions in negotiation" Simone Moran, Ben Gurion University, School of Management, Beer Sheva, Israel.

Yoella Bereby-Meyer, Ben Gurion University, Dept of Psychology, Beer Sheva, Israel.

Maurice Schweitzer, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Executive summary of the final report The research includes studies across three projects. In Israel we conducted studies that focus on the later stages of the emotion regulation process, primarily distinguishing between two types of emotion regulation strategies: (a) Cognitive reappraisal, construing a potentially emotion eliciting situation in a way that modifies its emotional impact, and (b) Expressive suppression, inhibiting the emotion expressive behavior (Gross, 1998). This line of research included two main projects: one focused on the context of negotiations and the other focused on the context of economic decision making in social interactions (e.g., ultimatum and trust games). In the USA we conducted studies that focused on the initial stages of the emotion regulation process, namely, on the "situation selection" strategy. We specifically explored how individuals typically feel in anticipation of a negotiation and how they regulate their emotions.

We have presented this work at nine international conferences. A PhD thesis at the Ben Gurion University has emanated from the grant, and four papers are currently under preparation and are expected to be submitted for publication within the next few months. Below is a summary of the main findings and accomplishments in each of the three projects.

Project I: Cognitive Reappraisal vs. Suppression in Negotiations In line with the main goal of our initial proposal, we conducted several studies to examine the effect of various emotion regulation strategies – namely, expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal (Gross, 1998) on outcomes of integrative (value creation) and distributive (value allocation) negotiation. Results of this line of research indicate that, contrary to the popular textbook recommendation of maintaining a "poker face" during negotiations, and despite a greater tendency to regulate anger in negotiations by means of expressive suppression, this strategy can be detrimental to negotiators and their desired results. When negotiators use Expressive suppression, their anger is not necessarily controlled (perhaps just the opposite) and the deliberate attempt to suppress angry feelings may well result in resource depletion. Our results also imply that cognitive reappraisal may not always be an effective strategy for regulating emotions. Specifically, its effectiveness may be moderated in ongoing interactive situations, which are complex, highly emotional, and require ongoing emotion regulation. This work has been written up in Hebrew and was recently approved as a PhD thesis. We are currently in the process of preparing a paper, which we expect to submit for publication by June 2014.

Project II: Cognitive Reappraisal vs. Suppression in Economic Decision Making in Social Interactions In a second project, we conducted several studies to examine the effect of down regulating positive and negative emotions by means of expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal in the context of economic decision making in social interactions (e.g., ultimatum and trust games). Our results demonstrate that emotion regulation, especially in the form of reappraisal, leads to a decrease in negative as well as positive emotions. This reduction in emotions results in decisions that are closer to the ones predicted by the standard economic model. The fact that in the Trust Game, reappraising positive emotions resulted in making less positively reciprocating responses, rules out the notion that reappraisal generally leads to more pro-social choices. Our results further imply that the impact of reappraising emotions on negative and positive reciprocity cannot be accounted for by a change in the perceived attractiveness of the offers that are reciprocated, but rather by the ability to resist temptation to punish or to reward others. We are currently writing up two papers to summarize this part, one focusing on negative reciprocity (Ultimatum game) and the other on positive reciprocity (Trust game), which we expect to submit by July 2014.

Project III: Emotion Selection in Negotiations (USA) In a third project we conducted studies that focused on the initial stages of the emotion regulation process and explored how individuals typically feel and how they regulate their emotions when anticipating a negotiation. In these studies we demonstrate that individuals often perceive negotiations in competitive terms and consequently feel anxious as they anticipate negotiating, but aspire to feel angry during a negotiation, because they believe that feeling angry will confer a strategic advantage; individuals who perceive negotiations in competitive terms choose to up-regulate authentic anger. We further find that task framing can moderate how negotiators perceive negotiations and consequently regulate their emotions; negotiators are less likely to up-regulate anger when negotiations are framed in cooperative rather than competitive terms. We are currently in the process of designing and running additional studies to explore individual differences, such as negotiation self-efficacy and subjective power that may moderate negotiators’ desire to up-regulate their anger prior to negotiations. We expect to complete running these additional studies, writing them up, and submitting a paper for publication by October 2014.