The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  In another study of negotiator training, four other learning principles were compared to learning by analogy (Nadler, Thompson, and Van Boven, 2003):

  Learning by observation (watching other negotiators)

  Textbook learning (reading about negotiation principles)

  Learning by feedback (process feedback, as described in the previous section)

  Learning by experience only (no explicit training)

  The greatest improvement in negotiator performance was seen with negotiators who had analogy training or observation training. Performance also improved, albeit to a lesser extent, when negotiators learned through feedback. Those exposed to textbook learning or to learning by experience alone showed no measurable improvement in performance. Thus, the picture emerging from this research is that training programs teaching negotiators how to make relevant comparisons between prior and current negotiation experiences are extremely important for equipping negotiators with the skills to leverage their past experiences in current and future negotiations.

  Negotiation Skills Training.

  Several studies have used training and education to improve negotiators’ effectiveness. For example, Idson and colleagues (2004) trained negotiators to focus more accurately on the decisions of other parties in mixed-motive negotiations and found that participants made superior decisions. Similarly, Moran and Ritov (2007) found that negotiators who understand their opponent’s gains for particular offers versus their general priorities among issues were more likely to improve their performance. In a different set of experiments, Kray, Galinsky, and Markman (2009) found that negotiators who generate additive (as opposed to subtractive) counterfactuals for negotiations perform better.

  One fruitful line of research involves regulating emotions in negotiations that involve high conflict. The idea here is that the general ability to regulate one’s emotions at the bargaining table will help people keep a level head during heated negotiations. In one study, Israeli participants were exposed to information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and then rated their support for different policies that address the situation. In addition, half the participants were given cognitive-reappraisal training, which teaches people to change the meaning of a situation in order to change their emotional responses to that situation (see Ochsner and Gross, 2008), and the other half were not trained. Those who were trained with cognitive-reappraisal strategies showed more support for conciliatory policies and less support for aggressive policies than those with no training (Halperin, Porat, Tamir, and Gross, 2012). Because negotiators’ effectiveness is contingent on their thoughts and feelings at the bargaining table, strategies that can help negotiators optimally regulate their behavior may help improve the outcomes of negotiations and conflict resolution attempts.

  CONCLUSION

  We believe that the marriage between practitioners and theorists should be much more solid than it is. Theorists have identified a host of rather benign-looking beliefs and cognitions that hinder effective negotiations, but they have failed to produce a systematic body of research aimed at reducing cognitive biases that hinder effective dispute resolution. Unfortunately, most negotiators are not aware of the existence of cognitive bias and its deleterious effects. In this chapter, we have identified biases that negotiators carry into negotiation, biases that erupt during negotiation, and biases that contaminate negotiators’ perceptions of outcomes. We examined naturally occurring remedies as well as structured techniques to remove or mitigate bias. We hope that theorists and practitioners continue to identify and examine new methods by which to eliminate or reduce cognitive bias at the bargaining table.

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