The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Impression-motivated participants expressed attitudes that were much more congruent with their alleged partners’ attitudes than did accuracy-motivated participants: when the partner favored one side of the issue, they favored the same side, whereas when the partner opposed it, they opposed it. Interestingly, accuracy-motivated and impression-motivated participants exhibited the same amount of systematic processing (as measured by the number of issue-relevant thoughts that were listed). However, whereas accuracy-motivated participants’ systematic processing was open-minded and unbiased by their partners’ attitudes, impression-motivated participants exhibited systematic processing that was biased toward their partners’ attitudes. For example, when the partner favored allowing broadcasts of election returns while the polls were still open, impression-motivated participants listed thoughts that were much more positive about arguments supporting the issue and more critical about arguments opposing it.

  Although accuracy motivation, defense motivation, and impression motivation may sometimes operate in isolation from one another, it is likely that multiple motives may be relevant in any given setting. A negotiator, for example, may be motivated both to attain an accurate understanding of the opposing party’s needs and demands and to present an image of herself as tough and assertive. Which motivation exerts a stronger impact on heuristic and systematic processing may change depending on what concerns are most important to a particular person in a particular setting (Zuckerman and Chaiken, 1997, as cited in Chen and Chaiken, 1999).

  Summary

  The heuristic-systematic model proposes two distinct modes of thinking about information. Systematic processing involves attempts to thoroughly understand any available information through careful attention and deep thinking, whereas heuristic processing involves focusing on salient and easily comprehended cues that activate well-learned judgmental shortcuts. Heuristic processing is a more efficient and relatively automatic mode of processing but confers less judgmental confidence; systematic processing confers more confidence but is relatively effortful and time-consuming. Thus, individuals tend to engage in heuristic processing unless they are both motivated and able to think carefully about information. Furthermore, both modes of processing can be relatively open-minded, driven by accuracy concerns, or relatively biased, driven by defense or impression concerns.

  The principles of this model have important implications for persuasion in conflict and negotiation. By facilitating mutual persuasion, participants in conflict resolution can increase the likelihood of identifying win-win solutions and creating long-lasting agreements. We turn now to examine research that is especially relevant to conflict settings and discuss implications and recommendations for practice.

  PERSUASION IN THE CONTEXT OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

  Over the past decade, persuasion theory has been increasingly incorporated into research on the processes underlying negotiation and conflict resolution (see Thompson, Wang, and Gunia, 2010). In this section, we discuss these advances in light of our heuristic-systematic perspective and address other areas of persuasion research that have implications for conflict situations.

  Heuristic and Systematic Processing in Negotiation Settings

  Research exploring heuristic and systematic processing in negotiation simulations has confirmed the utility of the dual-process perspective for understanding how people process information in conflict settings. When negotiators have only modest levels of motivation (or insufficient cognitive capacity), they often rely on heuristics such as fixed-pie assumptions (the perception that a negotiation is a zero-sum game), initial anchor values (e.g., first offers, or information about the value of agreements typically reached), and stereotypes about an opponent’s group membership. (See de Dreu, 2010, for a review.) In contrast, when motivation and capacity are relatively high, reliance on these heuristics tends to decrease as systematic processing increases.

  Researchers have identified several factors that influence the extent to which people process information in negotiations. (See de Dreu, 2010.) These factors include both stable individual differences and temporary elements of a given situation that influence motivation or capacity. For instance, individuals high in the dispositional need for cognitive closure—that is, the desire to reach a judgment quickly and avoid ambiguity (Webster and Kruglanski, 1994)—are more likely to rely solely on heuristics than are those who have a low need for closure.

  Temporary, situation-specific factors such as the presence of a highly involving task or process accountability (the need to justify the way a decision was made) tend to increase the extent of systematic processing, whereas time pressure and aversive conditions (noise, for instance) tend to decrease such processing. In one relevant study, de Dreu (2003) examined the effect of time pressure on fixed-pie perceptions. Business students were paired and asked to play the role of a buyer or seller in a negotiation over a car. The negotiation task was designed to hold integrative potential: the issues varied in importance to the two negotiators, so an integrative solution that capitalized on this variation in priorities would be more beneficial to both negotiators than a fifty-fifty split based on a fixed-pie assumption. Participants were led to believe that they had either plenty of time in which to complete the negotiation (low time pressure condition) or relatively little time (high time pressure condition). Participants were more likely to revise their fixed-pie assumptions, which led to higher joint outcomes, under low rather than high time pressure. These results suggest that time pressure reduces systematic processing, heightening reliance on heuristic cues like fixed-pie assumptions, and preventing negotiators from capitalizing on integrative potential.

  Multiple Motives in Conflict Resolution

  Historically, the study of conflict has emphasized the importance of underlying motives in driving behavior. A negotiator may be motivated to further her own party’s interests, explore integrative potential cooperatively in an effort to expand the pie, defend her own beliefs and those of her group, or convey a favorable image of herself to her opponent, any third parties, and her constituency. Although the classic definition of the negotiation as a mixed-motive situation focuses mainly on negotiators’ conflicting motives of cooperation and competition, conflict settings can be characterized by a wide range of motivations held by a wide range of participants. Next, we examine the cooperation-competition distinction common in the negotiation field and then return to our three broad motives of accuracy, defense, and impression, now in the context of conflict resolution.

  Social Motivation.

  The theory of cooperation and competition (Deutsch, 1973) and dual-concern theory (Pruitt and Rubin, 1986) suggest that social motives are critical to understanding negotiator behavior. A basic distinction between two broad social motives—motivation to maximize one’s own outcomes (a competitive, egoistic motivation) and motivation to maximize joint outcomes (a cooperative, prosocial motivation)—is frequently used in conflict research and has been shown to influence information processing in these settings. (See de Dreu and Carnevale, 2003.)

  Social motivation may arise from individual differences (such as social value orientation: the tendency to prefer a certain distribution of outcomes between oneself and another person; see Kuhlman and Marshello, 1975) or from elements of the situation. Situational elements shown to increase prosocial motivation include instructions from trusted authorities to be cooperative (versus competitive), expecting a future interaction with the other party, viewing a task as a cooperative rather than competitive enterprise, and focusing on similar (versus differing) group memberships. (See de Dreu, 2004, for a review.) For example, Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2004) found that simply changing the name of a prisoner’s dilemma game from “The Wall Street Game” to “The Community Game” drastically increased cooperative behavior among their participants, presumably by increasing people’s motivation to cooperate with each other on the task. Negotiators and mediators can use such techniques to increase prosocial motivation in conflict settin
gs. Changing the terminology associated with a negotiation (e.g., calling it “joint problem solving”), emphasizing the ongoing relationship between parties, and highlighting shared group membership may each help increase cooperative behavior.

  Like defense and impression motivation, social motivations can lead to selective processing geared toward fulfilling competitive or cooperative goals. For example, de Dreu and Boles (1998) measured participants’ social value orientation and asked them to read a list of competitive and cooperative heuristics (e.g., “your gain equals my loss,” “equal split is fair”) in preparation for a negotiation task. Participants were later given a surprise memory quiz in which they were asked to recall as many of the heuristics on the original list as possible. Prosocial participants recalled more cooperative than competitive heuristics, whereas egoistic participants recalled more competitive than cooperative heuristics. Social motivation thus influenced information processing such that people remembered heuristics consistent with their competitive or cooperative goal.

  Although competitive and cooperative motives are clearly basic elements of conflict situations, we may gain a finer-grained understanding of persuasion in these contexts by linking social motives with the tripartite analysis of motivation discussed earlier. Competitive, or egoistic, motivation is often comparable to defense motivation: both involve concern with protecting the self or the in-group against threats to actual resources or to one’s self-image or group image. In contrast, prosocial motivation may often be associated with accuracy or impression motivations. Concern with both parties’ outcomes should give rise to accuracy motivation because open-minded processing of all available information provides the best route to discovering integrative potential and maximizing joint outcomes. Prosocial motivation may also be associated with impression motivation: the desire to cooperate and the desire to make a good impression seem reciprocally linked. If two countries want to cooperate with each other, their leaders will probably seek to establish and maintain a positive relationship.

  Thus, whereas egoistic motivation and defense motivation seem closely related, prosocial motivation may be linked to accuracy or impression motivation, or both. We turn now to consider how these three broad motives operate in conflict settings.

  Accuracy Motivation.

  Accuracy motivation in conflict situations may be induced by a number of factors, including prosocial motivation. Certain kinds of accountability can also give rise to accuracy motivation. (See Lerner and Tetlock, 1999.) When an individual expects to discuss an issue with, justify a decision to, or be evaluated by an unknown audience, he tends to engage in preemptive self-criticism, displaying motivation to arrive at an accurate conclusion. (See Tetlock, Skitka, and Boettger, 1989.) Thus, when a negotiator is accountable to an audience whose views are unknown, he is likely to process information in an open-minded fashion.

  To test this idea in a negotiation context, de Dreu, Koole, and Steinel (2000) randomly assigned business student participants to high-accountability and low-accountability conditions before asking them to engage in a mock negotiation over the purchase of a car. In the high-accountability condition, participants expected that their negotiation strategies and decisions would be reviewed and evaluated by an experienced negotiator and a psychologist. In the low-accountability condition, participants did not receive this information. The results showed that under high accountability, participants were more likely to revise their fixed-pie assumptions and obtain higher joint outcomes. Increasing accuracy motivation therefore increases the likelihood that integrative solutions will be identified and used when they exist. In general, accuracy goals seem desirable in conflict situations because they motivate people to seek out and consider information in an open-minded way, which is critical for discovering potential solutions and accepting necessary compromises.

  Defense Motivation.

  Unfortunately, we suspect that accuracy motivation is unlikely to naturally dominate in conflict situations, especially in the early stages of a negotiation. At least in Western cultures, parties often assume that their interests are diametrically opposed (see Morris and Gelfand, 2004), and therefore any gain by an opposing party seems to mean a loss for one’s own. Group or individual identities can also be perceived as zero sum, in that the validation of one party’s identity and history delegitimizes that of the other (Kelman, 1999). Such perceptions motivate people to defend their resources and identities and to engage in biased information processing to bolster their positions. Indeed, research suggests that defense motivation can interfere with integrative solutions and lead to partial impasses in negotiations (de Dreu, Weingart, and Kwon, 2000; Trötschel, Hüffmeier, Loschelder, Schwartz, and Gollwitzer, 2011).

  Egoistic, competitive motives may also be triggered by aspects of the situation that cue competition in a given culture. For example, Kay, Wheeler, Bargh, and Ross (2004) found that exposing participants to objects associated with the business world (such as briefcases and business suits) increased their selfish, competitive behavior in an ultimatum game (a task in which participants proposed a take-it-or-leave-it split of money between themselves and an unknown partner). Simply seeing objects typically associated with competition can therefore lead to competitive behavior and may trigger defense-motivated, selective information processing. Removing such objects from a negotiation context, or using a setting associated with cooperation, may help limit defense motivation and encourage cooperation and open-minded thinking.

  Accountability to a mediator, arbitrator, or one’s constituents can also activate defense motivation when a negotiator is committed to a certain position. Research shows that although accountability to an unknown audience can increase accuracy motivation, accountability instead results in “defensive bolstering” of an initial viewpoint when a person is already highly committed to this position (Tetlock, Skitka, and Boettger, 1989). Because opposing parties often enter negotiations highly committed to their opinions, accountability to others may tend to activate defense rather than accuracy motivation.

  Persuasion research indicates that if systematic processing is activated by defense motivation, parties seek out and attend to information that supports the desire to dismiss, resist, and reject an opponent’s overtures, and they resist attending to information that supports the appropriateness of cooperative responses. When defense motivation is primary, one’s goal in processing is to resist influence, maintain prior beliefs and commitments, and look for confirmation of those beliefs wherever possible. This sort of motivated processing leads parties to overestimate the divergence between their positions and can exacerbate conflict (Keltner and Robinson, 1993). Conversely, factors that reduce defense motivation, such as perspective taking, can help move parties toward agreement (Trötschel et al., 2011).

  Impression Motivation.

  In addition to defense motives, impression motives may also operate in the early stages of negotiation, since parties are eager to create a specific impression for various audiences. The actual or imagined presence of others determines the audience toward whom an impression motive is geared. For example, a negotiator may focus on conveying an impression of toughness when face-to-face with an opponent but might instead play the role of a victim when communicating with a third party to gain sympathy. If both parties are in the room at once, the target of the impression goal may vary depending on the relative salience of the two parties from moment to moment. When the negotiator’s attention is drawn toward one party as opposed to the other, the salient party may become the focus of impression-management attempts.

  A number of factors may influence impression motivation in negotiation situations. When an individual is accountable to a known audience and has low commitment to a position, impression motivation is triggered, and the individual processes information so as to align his own position with that of the target audience (Lerner and Tetlock, 1999). If, for example, a mediator is accountable to his superiors and knows that they believe party A aggressed against party B,
he may process information to selectively support his superiors’ position and therefore come to believe in party A’s culpability himself.

  One’s role as an advisor may also affect impression motivation. Jonas, Schulz-Hardt, and Frey (2005) found that participants playing the role of an advisor who made a nonbinding recommendation to a client were more even-handed in their information processing than were the clients. However, when advisors were asked to make a binding decision on behalf of their client, impression motivation was triggered, and information processing was selectively geared toward being able to justify their recommendation to their client. These results suggest that when a representative is negotiating on someone else’s behalf, asking for a nonbinding recommendation will maximize accuracy motivation, whereas allowing the representative to make a binding decision on the other person’s behalf can lead to biased processing and suboptimal decisions.