The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Impression motivation may have both positive and negative effects on information processing in conflict situations. On the one hand, when negotiators wish to project an image of themselves as cooperative, they may be motivated to process information open-mindedly and seek to maximize fairness and joint outcomes. For example, Ohbuchi and Fukushima (1997) found that individuals higher in general impression-management concerns were more cooperative in their responses to an unreasonable request, when capacity and motivation were sufficient. In such instances, impression motivation and cooperative tendencies may be closely associated. On the other hand, when the desired image is more competitive, impression motivation may lead to selective processing geared toward conveying and justifying a tough image. Thus, an impression-motivated negotiator seeking to project a cooperative image should be especially likely to discover integrative potential in a conflict situation, but an impression-motivated negotiator who instead wants to project a competitive image may be especially unlikely to question fixed-pie assumptions.

  Implications of Multiple Motives for Conflict Resolution.

  Parties in conflict often perceive their positions to be opposing and irreconcilable. Initially negotiators may therefore attempt to coerce the opposition into accepting an outcome that fails to achieve the latter’s own stated position. However, successful conflict resolution requires that opposing parties turn away from their public positions to find compatible issues within their underlying interests (Fisher, Ury, and Patton, 2011; Thompson et al., 2010). The discussion of underlying needs and interests makes it increasingly possible to persuade one another both that these needs are legitimate and that sacrificing some things of lesser interest may allow each side to gain what is more important to them. It is only through this sort of persuasion—rather than coercion—that successful and lasting resolution can be achieved. This can occur, however, only if opponents are both willing and able not only to transmit but also to receive information. In other words, negotiators must be willing and able to persuade and to be persuaded. Moreover, they must want to search for information that disconfirms, as well as information that confirms, their prior beliefs about their opponents’ interests. If parties in negotiation begin to change one another’s minds about the nature of the conflict, the issues at stake, and the compatibility of underlying interests, then cooperation can ensue.

  From a persuasion perspective, then, the key to successful conflict resolution is to move parties toward open-minded, accuracy-motivated processing. In fact, research suggests that when even one negotiator is high in accuracy motivation, the likelihood of identifying integrative potential can increase (Ten Velden, Beersma, and de Dreu, 2010). Participants should seek to increase the accuracy motivation of all parties, including themselves, and to dampen defense and impression motives that inhibit cognitive flexibility and willingness to consider information that disconfirms prior beliefs.

  PROMOTING OPEN-MINDED PROCESSING

  In the final sections of this chapter, we discuss other factors that may increase accuracy motivation in conflict situations and recommend strategies for promoting open-minded processing. Awareness of these factors should help negotiation participants craft situations that encourage open-minded thinking and integrative solutions and enable them to identify potential sources of bias in their own and others’ reasoning.

  Group Identity

  Because group identities tend to be highly activated in conflict situations, it is important to understand the role that group identification plays in persuasion. Group identification, or the subjective perception that one belongs to a group, defines a particular group as an in-group, opposing groups as out-groups, and irrelevant groups as neutral groups.

  In general, shared group membership—the perception that the audience and the source belong to the same social category—tends to increase persuasion relative to unshared group membership (Fleming and Petty, 2000; Mackie and Queller, 2000). Highlighting a common in-group identity between source and target can increase persuasion by providing an important heuristic cue that the message is valid. Negotiators and mediators would therefore do well to make common in-group identities salient when conveying information to each other. For example, a mediator might increase the willingness of two negotiators to consider a proposed agreement by highlighting an identity she shares with each negotiator (such as mother, Muslim, or Indian). Importantly, a social identity must be salient in order to influence persuasion (Fleming and Petty, 2000). So a mediator and negotiator’s shared identity as mothers will increase mutual persuasion only so long as they continue to think of themselves as mothers.

  However, it is important to note that group endorsement of a position can also lead individuals to selectively process information. Individuals may be motivated by defense or impression concerns to agree with the in-group and disagree with the out-group and may therefore process information selectively to arrive at these preferred judgments (Fleming and Petty, 2000; Wyer, 2010). For example, Cohen (2003) asked liberal undergraduate students to evaluate a proposal for a generous (stereotypically liberal) federally funded job training program. Half the participants learned that their own political group opposed the program, while half received no information about group endorsement. On average, participants in the latter condition supported the program, in keeping with their ideological beliefs. However, when participants were told that their in-group opposed the program, they showed biased processing of the information presented in the proposal, selectively thinking about the information in a way that allowed them to agree with the in-group’s position. As a result, participants in the in-group-oppose condition were more likely to oppose the program themselves. Moreover, participants believed that group endorsement influenced the attitudes of others but perceived themselves to be relatively unaffected by this information.

  Information about group positions can thus strongly influence attitudes by inducing selective information processing in support of the in-group position, but people may be unaware of this bias in their own judgments. Such effects can hinder conflict resolution: once a group takes a position on an issue, in-group and out-group members will likely diverge in their attitudes regardless of actual issue content, exacerbating conflict. Furthermore, self-serving and group-serving perceptions of bias (“I am more objective than anyone else,” “We are more objective than they are”) make it difficult to convince someone that other opinions may be valid. We describe several strategies to reduce such close-mindedness in the sections that follow.

  There may also be at least one way to harness this bias toward agreeing with one’s in-group as a tool to promote successful conflict resolution. If individuals tend to follow their group’s lead in forming opinions about relevant issues, then in-group endorsement of peaceful conflict resolution should be a powerful persuasive tool. Publicizing in-group support for deescalation, or for a particular agreement, may help consolidate general support for reconciliation. For example, if 60 percent of a nation’s citizens support a particular agreement, publicizing that support could help persuade even more citizens that the agreement is a good one. (See Ledgerwood and Callahan, 2012; Stangor, Sechrist, and Jost, 2001.)

  Self-Affirmation

  Given that mediators and negotiators often face other parties who may be biased by motivations to agree with their own group or present a tough, aggressive image, what can be done to increase open-minded and accuracy-driven information processing? One useful tool may be a strategy called self-affirmation. Research suggests that affirming an important aspect of a person’s self-image can reduce defense-motivated processing in response to self-relevant threats in other domains. According to self-affirmation theory, individuals are motivated to maintain a positive image of themselves and they respond to threatening information defensively in order to maintain this positive self-concept (see Sherman and Cohen, 2006). Importantly, however, if the self is positively affirmed in some way, this can buffer the self-concept against a subsequent threat and reduce defensive
processing (see Sherman, Nelson, and Steele, 2000).

  Thus, if negotiators reflect on their commitment to an important personal value before beginning a negotiation—or if one negotiator makes a point of recognizing that the other has lived up to an important value in some way—this could reduce defensiveness and increase open-minded thinking. For example, a political leader who is highly committed to her country might enter a negotiation quite high in defense motivation, unwilling to consider any information that calls her country’s goodness into question. Identifying and affirming a value that is important to her self-concept could help reduce this defense-motivated processing (e.g., if equality is important to her, one might compliment her recent actions in promoting equality in her country).

  Research on self-affirmation has found that self-affirmation increases openness to belief-disconfirming information, buffering against the threat of messages that counter self-relevant attitudes and enabling accuracy-driven processing. (See, for example, Correll, Spencer, and Zanna, 2004.) Self-affirmation has also been shown to effectively reduce or eliminate bias in information processing when identity concerns are high, and it can increase concession making and positive attitudes toward one’s partner in a negotiation situation (Cohen, Sherman, Bastardi, Hsu, and McGoey, 2007). The most salient identities in conflict situations tend to be those most likely to interfere with open-minded processing of information related to the conflict: an individual is most likely to think of his identity as a Democrat when debating with a Republican, as a manager when negotiating with labor, and as a father when arguing with his son. Research on self-affirmation suggests that affirming the self-concepts of those involved in conflict resolution can reduce motivation to defend salient identities and increase accuracy-motivated processing.1

  Unexpected Information and Moderate Positions

  Information that is unexpected or surprising can increase accuracy-motivated, systematic processing, leading to a revision of assumptions and an open-minded consideration of all available information (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993; Petty and Wegener, 1999). For example, when people are relatively low in motivation to think carefully about an issue, encountering incongruent information (e.g., reading arguments against an issue yet learning that most people support the issue) can trigger increased systematic processing (Maheswaran and Chaiken, 1991). In conflict situations, parties often assume their opponents to be competitive and self-interested. These assumptions may be revised if negotiators offer unexpected concessions, talk about the other’s interests rather than their own, or focus on gains that the other can accrue from settlement rather than losses that loom if a suboptimal settlement is adopted. Initially the opposition might meet such tactics with great suspicion, since defense motives are likely to be strong and it may be difficult to believe that communications are motivated by something other than self-interest. Nevertheless, with persistence, this sort of tactic should gradually induce the opposition to become more open-minded and systematic in their thinking.

  Research also suggests that adopting moderate rather than extreme positions can help increase accuracy-driven, open-minded processing. Message extremity and attitude change tend to have an inverted U-shaped relationship: as the discrepancy between the position advocated in a message and a target’s own position increases, there is more room for persuasion to occur, yet when message discrepancy is extreme, it can trigger defense-motivated processing and counterarguing (Aronson, Turner, and Carlsmith, 1963; Bochner and Insko, 1966). Thus, it is important to identify the sweet spot of message discrepancy: a position that is different enough to change someone’s mind yet not so extreme that it leads to defensive processing. Especially in conflict situations, where opponents often assume their interests to be diametrically opposed and perceive the two sides’ positions to be more polarized than they actually are (Keltner and Robinson, 1993; Thompson and Hastie, 1990), signaling moderation may be an especially important tool for encouraging open-minded thinking. For example, a negotiator who wants to promote accuracy-driven processing in his opponent could make his own positions seem less extreme by first highlighting a shared group membership or by talking about an unrelated issue on which he and his opponent share similar views at the beginning of the negotiation (see Weiss, 1957).

  CONCLUSION

  We had two primary goals in this chapter. First, we wanted to give an overview of current psychological research from a dual-process perspective on persuasion. The first part of the chapter thus presented a dual-process theory describing how persuasion results from two types of information processing—one based on heuristics and the other involving systematic processing. In addition, we argued that there are three classes of motives (accuracy, defense, and impression) that may influence information processing, and hence persuasion. Each of these can be associated with both heuristic and systematic processing. As a result, it is the level of motivation, not the specific type, that influences the extent of systematic processing.

  The goal in the second part of the chapter was to review theory and research that relates persuasion to conflict situations and to describe implications and recommendations for practice. Here we described research applying the heuristic-systematic perspective to negotiation settings. We then discussed a number of evidence-based strategies that negotiators can use to try to increase accuracy-driven, open-minded processing, including highlighting shared group identities, affirming the other party’s important values, doing the unexpected (e.g., offering unexpected concessions), adopting moderate rather than extreme positions, and emphasizing areas of similarity or agreement at the beginning of a negotiation.

  Our hope is that the considerations raised by persuasion research can encourage new insights into the process of conflict resolution and how to achieve both integrative and long-lasting agreements. By understanding and attending to factors that influence information processing, practitioners can better facilitate open-minded, thoughtful consideration of alternate viewpoints by all parties involved in a conflict, and ultimately, its resolution.

  Note

  1. Self-affirmation research has yet to be applied to non-Western cultures. In collectivistic cultures, self-affirmation may be more effective when focused on interdependent aspects of self. (See Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus, and Suzuki, 2004.)

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