The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)
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The pattern of results is not unique to this incident. Exaggeration of perceived conflict exists in many other domains: abortion, the death penalty, the arms race, and even the Western canon debate (the dispute among educators about the choice of books in introductory college-level civilization and literature courses; Robinson and Keltner, 1996).
It is important to consider the implications of the tendency for people to exaggerate conflict. If the partisans in a conflict perceive their differences as greater than they really are, they might be overly pessimistic about finding common ground. If people hold erroneous assumptions about the gap between their own position and that of the other party, then they might decide that it is not worthwhile to initiate negotiations (Robinson et al., 1995).
The fact that people exaggerate the extent of conflict suggests that information exchange among parties is crucial. Unless both parties to a conflict discuss the nature of their beliefs, assumptions, and concerns, each party continues to perceive the other as unreasonable and extreme. Because neutral third parties also tend to exaggerate conflict, these results have important implications for mediators as well. To be effective, mediators must accurately understand the other party’s interests. If a mediator relies on her preconceived assumptions about each party’s position, she is likely to overestimate the extremity of each party’s position and the disparity between the parties’ interests.
In addition to forming an accurate understanding of the conflict, mediators have an important role to play in helping parties overcome their own perception of exaggerated conflict. Exaggeration of conflict comes in two forms: each party tends to see the other party’s position as more extreme than it really is, and one’s own side is also seen as more extreme than it really is (Robinson et al., 1995). Mediators can help parties see that their own position does not need to be as extreme as they think it needs to be.
Biased Punctuation of Conflict.
The need to simplify a conflict situation can lead to faulty perceptions about cause-and-effect relationships. People may falsely infer a causal relationship where none exists, or they may assume that a given action by one person results in an action by the other person. This effect, known as the biased punctuation of conflict, occurs when people interpret interaction with their adversaries in other-derogating terms (Kahn and Kramer, 1990). Actor A perceives the history of conflict with another actor, B, as a sequence of B-A, B-A, B-A, in which the initial hostile or aggressive move was always made by B, obliging A to engage in defensive and legitimate retaliatory action. Actor B punctuates the same history of interaction as A-B, A-B, A-B, however, reversing the roles of aggressor and defender. Disagreement about how to punctuate a sequence of events in a conflict relationship is at the root of many disputes. When each side to the dispute is queried, they explain their frustrations and actions as defenses against the acts of the other party. As a result, conflict escalates unnecessarily.
Closely related to the biased punctuation of conflict is the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977). For example, negotiators who bargain with an opponent who has an attractive BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) and have difficulty settling on an outcome are inclined to regard the negotiator as disagreeable rather than to surmise that the other party has a better outside option (Morris, Larrick, and Su, 1999). In short, negotiators are quick to ascribe personality flaws as the root of intransigent behavior and overlook situational factors.
The Illusion of Transparency.
In our daily interactions with others, we tend to assume that when we express particular emotions or preferences, the people with whom we are interacting will accurately detect these cues. Yet this is not necessarily the case. We often overestimate the degree to which others have access to our internal states.
The tendency to overestimate the degree to which others understand what is on our minds is known as the illusion of transparency (Gilovich, Savitsky, and Medvec, 1998). The illusion of transparency suggests that negotiators believe that they are revealing more than they actually are. In other words, they believe that others have access to information about them when in fact they do not. For example, in one investigation, negotiators judged whether an observer to the negotiation would be able to accurately discern their negotiation goals from their behavior (Vorauer and Claude, 1998). Negotiators consistently overestimated the transparency of their objectives. Thus, people feel more like an open book with respect to their goals and interests in negotiations than they actually are.
In highly contentious negotiations, parties may receive a better outcome if they do not express too much excitement over closing a deal. For instance, if a prospective home buyer is so enamored with the house that he may be willing to pay the asking price, then communicating this level of enthusiasm to the seller would put the buyer at a disadvantage. If the seller were aware of the buyer’s exuberance, she may simply refuse to lower the price at all, knowing that the buyer would likely be willing to settle for the asking price. In this case, it is in the buyer’s best interest not to let his enthusiasm for the home leak out. Yet even when we are consciously trying to hide our true preferences, we still experience the illusion of transparency. In one investigation, Van Boven, Gilovich, and Medvec (2003) found that negotiators who consciously tried to conceal their preferences nevertheless believed that they had tipped their hand to the other party more than they actually had: “The illusion of transparency is thus due to the sense that one’s specific actions and reactions that arise in the give-and-take of negotiation—a blush here, an averted gaze there—are more telling than they actually are” (Van Boven et al., 2003, p. 128). Sometimes there are advantages to revealing information. For example, when negotiators have different priorities, negotiators who share information are more likely to reach integrative agreements than those who do not (Thompson, 1991). This is partly because of our inclination to reciprocate: if you share information, chances are that the other party will share information as well (Thompson, 1991). But the illusion of transparency can discourage beneficial information sharing because it can mislead negotiators into falsely believing that the other party has enough (or too much) information already (Van Boven et al., 2003). Alternatively, a negotiator who is aware that he might fall prey to the illusion of transparency can make a conscious effort to share information with the other party, thereby increasing the likelihood of resolving a conflict in a mutually beneficial way.
Biases of Outcome and Allocation
In this section, we discuss biases that affect how negotiators evaluate outcomes and allocations. Specifically, we focus on egocentrism and reactive devaluation.
Egocentrism and Biases in Fairness Allocations.
People tend to view themselves in a favorable light (Taylor and Brown, 1988). Our psychological immune system is so efficient that we do not even realize our judgments are tainted with self-interest. For example, consider a husband and wife reflecting on their perceptions of responsibility for cleaning dishes, shopping, child care, and other household and relationship activities. Imagine asking each spouse independently to score who does what percentage of the work. In such a case, both partners generally assume themselves to be more responsible than the other (Ross and Sicoly, 1979). When both spouses’ contributions are totaled for a “couple’s” score, the perceived contributions frequently amount to more than 100 percent! The same pattern can occur in mixed-motive situations. Such differences in perception undoubtedly exacerbate conflict at home, in the workplace, and elsewhere. For example, in the Chicago teachers’ strike of 2012, Chicago teachers failed to reach an agreement with the city of Chicago regarding their pay and benefits. The resulting strike postponed the school year by over a week. Whereas the city thought it was making fair concessions by proposing to create new teacher jobs and a pay increase, the teachers perceived their previous concessions to be substantial; the result was gridlock and strike (Sustar, 2012).
Yet despite the egocentric bias, most negotiators describe themselves as wan
ting to be “fair” (Loewenstein, Thompson, and Bazerman, 1989). And most people also prefer to divide resources “fairly” (Messick, 1993). The problem is that self-interest tinges negotiators’ perceptions of the fair allocation of resources. This is because fairness is not an absolute construct but highly subjective. What is fair to one person may not be fair in the eyes of another. Although people generally want what is fair, their assessments of fairness are often self-serving (Messick and Sentis, 1979). Moreover, the fact that we have little or no self-awareness of this influence on our otherwise sound judgment heightens the intransigence of our views. Suppose you have worked for seven hours and have been paid twenty-five dollars. Another person has worked for ten hours doing the same work. How much do you think the other person should get paid? If you’re like most people, you believe the other person should get paid more for doing more work—about thirty dollars, on average (Messick and Sentis, 1979). This is hardly a self-serving response. Now consider the reverse situation: the other person has worked for seven hours and been paid twenty-five dollars. You have worked for ten hours. What is a fair wage for you to be paid? Messick and Sentis found the average response to be about thirty-five dollars. The difference is about ten dollars, and it illustrates the phenomenon of egocentric bias: people pay themselves substantially more than they are willing to pay others for doing the same task.
We have made the point that fairness is not an absolute construct; instead, it is socially defined. What is fair to one person may not be fair in the eyes of another. Consider what happened when two vice presidents of a major Fortune 100 company were promoted to senior vice president at about the same time in the late 1990s (Klein, 2003). Both moved into new offices, but one of them suspected an inequity. He pulled out blueprints and measured the square footage of each office. His suspicions were confirmed when it turned out the other’s office was bigger than his by a few feet. A former employee said, “He blew a gasket.” Walls were removed, and his office was reconfigured to make it as large as his counterpart’s. This example illustrates that in any situation, there are as many interpretations of fairness as there are parties involved. Here, equality, equity, and need are all plausible principles on which a decision can be made. Hence, in conflict resolution, two people may both truly want a fair settlement, but they may have very different and equally justifiable ideas about what is fair.
Consider another example. You are told about an accident in which a motorcyclist was injured after being hit by a car. After learning all the facts, you are asked to make a judgment of how much money you think is a fair settlement to compensate the motorcyclist for his injuries. Then you are asked to play the role of either the injured motorcyclist or the driver of the car and to negotiate a settlement. Most of the time, people in this situation have no trouble coming to an agreement (Babcock, Loewenstein, Issacharoff, and Camerer, 1995).
Now imagine doing the same thing, except that your role assignment comes first. That is, first you are asked to play the role of the motorcyclist or the driver, and then you learn all the facts, decide on a fair settlement, and finally negotiate. In this situation, the only thing that changes is that you learn the facts and make a fair settlement judgment through the eyes of one of the parties instead of from the standpoint of a neutral observer. As it turns out, this difference is crucial. Instead of having no trouble coming to an agreement (as do the people who do not know their roles until just prior to the negotiation), people who know their roles from the beginning have a very difficult time coming to an agreement (Babcock et al., 1995). The high impasse rate among people who know their roles from the beginning is linked to self-serving judgments of fairness. The more biased the prenegotiation fair settlement judgment is, the more likely the later negotiation will result in impasse.
Thus, a person who knows she is playing the role of motorcyclist before making a fair-settlement judgment is likely to assess a large damage award (in her own favor). A person who knows he is playing the role of the car driver before making a fair-settlement judgment is more likely to assess a small damage award (in his own favor). The result is that these two people have quite a hard time negotiating an agreement because their assessments of what is fair are so far apart.
Although biased perceptions of fairness are quite common (Babcock et al., 1995), cultural factors can exaggerate or mitigate these biases. In comparison to negotiators from individualistic cultures (e.g., the United States), negotiators from collectivist cultures (e.g., Japan) are less likely to hold such extreme biased perceptions of fairness (Gelfand et al., 2002). In one investigation, Gelfand et al. (2002) found that because of their higher levels of biased perceptions of fairness, U.S. negotiators experienced impasse more often compared to Japanese negotiators.
In general, there are often as many proposed solutions as there are parties to the conflict. Each party sincerely believes its own proposed outcome is fair for everyone. At the same time, each party’s conception of fairness is tainted by self-interest, so that each solution is most favorable to the party proposing it.
Reactive Devaluation.
When a conflict is resolved, the parties often assess how satisfied they are with the outcome of the resolution. Because of the absence of clear objective criteria, parties to conflict do not measure their outcomes on an absolute scale. Instead, success is a socially determined construct that is measured by many factors, including comparison with similar others, views of significant others, and the outcomes of one’s opponent. In fact, there is little or no relationship between how good people feel and their actual outcomes (Thompson, 1991). In conflict situations in which parties’ interests are not completely aligned, how good people feel is a converse function of the emotions displayed by the other person: when the other is sad, we feel good; when they are happy, we feel bad (Thompson, Valley, and Kramer, 1995).
Our feelings of satisfaction after the fact are not the only way we are affected by our opponent. Our preferences during an ongoing dispute can also be affected by the opponent’s expressed preferences. For example, in a survey of opinions regarding possible arms reductions by the United States and the Soviet Union, respondents were asked to evaluate the terms of a nuclear disarmament proposal, a proposal that was allegedly initiated by the United States, Soviet Union, or a neutral third party (Ross and Stillinger, 1991). In all cases, the proposal was identical; however, reactions to it depended on who allegedly initiated it. The terms were seen as unfavorable to the United States when the Soviets were the initiators, even though the same terms appeared moderately favorable when attributed to a neutral third party and quite favorable when attributed to the United States. (See also Oskamp, 1965.)
This case is an example of reactive devaluation, the tendency for a party to undervalue an offer just because it was the other party who offered it (Oskamp, 1965; Ross and Stillinger, 1991). The reasoning behind reactive devaluation might sound like this: “My opponent wouldn’t make this offer unless it’s good for him. But if it’s good for him, then it’s probably bad for me, so I’ll refuse to accept it.” The examples of responses to the arms reduction proposals illustrate that our preferences and our evaluation of a dispute can be determined by the other party’s preferences and reactions. When the other party is happy, we are sad; when the other party seems to favor a particular outcome, we devalue it.
Curhan, Neale, and Ross (2004) demonstrated that in typical negotiation formats, in which negotiators begin by simply exchanging initial proposals with one another, reactive devaluation of initial offers is a common response. By engaging in reactive devaluation—assuming the other party’s offer was primarily beneficial for the other party—many negotiators failed to reach agreement with one another. Two techniques helped to prevent reactive devaluation. First, asking negotiators to assign a rating to a variety of proposals reduced reactive devaluation by motivating negotiators to remain consistent with their original assessment even after one of the previously rated proposals is endorsed by the opponent. Second, asking neg
otiators to have a general discussion about the issues on the table, without making any proposals or offers, also reduced reactive devaluation. During these discussions, negotiators were able to express their needs and priorities, leading their counterparts subsequently to make more charitable attributions about the offers they received. Both prerating proposals and prior discussion are techniques that can be easily implemented by a mediator; if no mediator is present, the parties can try to structure the negotiation so that prediscussion of needs and priorities takes place before any specific offers are exchanged.
IMPLICATIONS OF NEGOTIATOR BIAS
The incidence of bias takes its toll on negotiators and negotiation outcomes. Some of these negative effects are evident, such as the fact that the fixed-pie perception reduces mutual agreement and increases the incidence of lose-lose outcomes. However, biases might also exact a psychological toll on negotiators. In this section, we consider several negative effects of biases.
Exaggeration of Conflict: False Conflict
Negotiations that involve some amount of conflict or mixed motives are highly susceptible to exaggerated perceptions of conflict and competition. This can lead to false conflict, that is, conflict where no conflict exists. For example, people who take extreme positions on an issue assume their opponents take an equally strong, but opposite, position (van Boven, Judd, and Sherman, 2012). In a labor negotiation, a labor union may highly prioritize the issue of salary increases. Because the union holds such a strong position on the issue, union members may presume that management is strongly against salary increases, even though management may not hold a strong position at all. For example, Kelley and Stahelski (1970) classified negotiators as either predominantly cooperative or predominantly competitive on the basis of their actual behavior. In a subsequent simulation, competitors negotiated with cooperators; whereas cooperators accurately perceived the competitors to be fundamentally competitive, the competitors failed to realize that the cooperators had benevolent intentions, and instead falsely assumed the cooperators were behaving competitively, which ultimately paved the way toward lose-lose outcomes. Thus, cognitive biases and faulty perceptions exacerbate conflict.