How self-regulation helps to master negotiation challenges: An overview, integration, and outlook

Abstract

En route to crafting profitable deals, negotiators face abundant challenges—from overcoming anger, to dealing with low power, to seeking hidden integrative opportunities. Here, we argue that self-regulation can help to master these negotiation challenges and improve negotiation outcomes. To this end, we provide a review of the literature on negotiation challenges and integrate it with self-regulation research. Based on the cybernetic feedback model of self-regulation and the phase model of negotiations, we structure the literature and argue how and why prominent self-regulation techniques such as specifying goals, mental contrasting, and if–then plans help to master negotiation challenges. In addition, we expand on the less researched self-regulation technique of self-monitoring and how it may help to achieve negotiation goals. We conclude that self-regulation provides a powerful toolbox to master the challenges that negotiators face at the bargaining table, identify limitations of the extant literature, and suggest avenues for future research.

Keywords:

• Self-regulation
• Negotiations
• Overview
• Self-monitoring
• Goal-setting
• If–then plans

Notes

¹ Of course, in many social situations people have (spontaneous) secondary social goals—such as saving face (J. M. Brett et al., 2007). Nevertheless crafting a profitable deal and maintaining proper social relationships are regularly primary goals that count in the long run.

² At first glance, it may seem paradoxical that both being angry and being confronted with anger lead to detrimental negotiation outcomes. One could argue that if anger expressions do indeed extract concessions from the opposing party, being angry should be functional since it heightens the probability of expressing anger. However, there is a difference between experienced and expressed emotions in two ways. First, being angry does not necessarily lead to expressing anger: If and how emotions are displayed depends heavily on cultural factors (Matsumoto, Takeuchi, Andayani, Kouznetsova, & Krupp, 1998), and even children have internalised restraining display rules for showing anger (Underwood, Coie, & Herbsman, 1992). Thus, felt anger is often not overtly expressed, but nevertheless exerts detrimental consequences on cognition and behaviour. Second, expressing anger does not require a person to genuinely experience the anger. Moreover, angry people rely more on heuristic processing (Bodenhausen, Sheppard, & Kramer, 1994; Lerner & Tiedens, 2006). Their ability to accurately judge their opponents’ interests is impaired (Allred et al., 1997). Thus, genuinely experienced anger impairs cognition and negotiation behaviour in ways that generally outweigh the advantages of expressing anger. Expressions of anger may also backfire. For instance, Côté et al. (2013) have shown that negotiators who make an angry face, but do not convey the anger in voice, statements, and so on, are reprimanded for their disingenuous (and strategic) anger expressions. Similarly, the beneficial effects of communicating disappointment do not necessarily imply that being disappointed is advantageous in negotiations.

³ Since according to Morris and Keltner’s (2000) phase model negative emotions are predominant in the positioning phase, we concentrate on negative emotions here. Note, however, that there is some evidence that the expression of happiness can also have detrimental effects in negotiations (Van Kleef et al., 2004a).

⁴ The term self-monitoring is also used to refer to a person’s dispositional control and situational adaptation of her self-presentation (Snyder, 1974). This understanding of self-monitoring is not relevant for present purposes and is not discussed further.

⁵ Of course, this combination of the CFM and the phase model is only one way amongst others to structure the literature. It attempts to provide a basis for discussion about how self-regulation informs negotiation research and identifies avenues for future research.