When do negative emotions give you an edge in negotiations?

I’m sat in negotiations for a coveted deal. As time goes on, the person across the table looks pained, shifts in their seat, and tells me how disappointed they feel about my approach to the negotiation. How am I likely to adjust my style - would I go easy on them, or go in for the kill? New research by Gert-Jan Lelieveld and colleagues suggests it depends on whether I feel guilty about it - and that’s a question of social context.

In a first experiment, students were requested to engage in a computer-based ultimatum negotiation, where they get to slice up a resource between themselves and a counterpart, who then gets to decide whether the deal is on; if not, both sides receive nothing. Before negotiations, participants completed a survey on their general attitude to negotiation, rating items such as ‘During negotiations, my own outcomes are important’. In a series of deceptive turns, participants were told that their survey responses were shared with the counterpart who had found them upsetting; participants were then given access to a (private) typed reaction from the counterpart that contained either anger words or disappointment words. In truth, there was no counterpart, with the ‘reactions’ just part of the experimental set-up. What effect would they have?

Anger and disappointment led to similar offers, except in one case: when the counterpart was presented as being from a rival university, rather than a fellow student. Here, participants in the disappointment condition were prepared to make a more aggressive bid that took more of the pie for themselves. A follow-up experiment found similar aggressive bids following disappointment when the participants were negotiating on behalf of a group, rather than for themselves.

The exceptional results were both found in conditions designed to minimise guilt. Disappointment is a ‘supplication’ emotion that indicates that something is wrong, and others need to do something about it. As an example of an other-directed emotion, its function is to elicit helping behaviour from others by triggering the negative state of guilt. But supplication also signals passivity and even helplessness, so when guilt isn’t appropriate, observers may prefer to exploit the disappointed.

This is what we see in this pattern of results. Guilt is less appropriate towards out-group members, like a member of a rival university, and is also dissipated when negotiating on behalf of an absent social group towards whom you have more explicit obligations. In both experiments participants reported the levels of guilt they felt, and these scores tracked generosity of offers in the disappointment conditions, but not in the anger ones.

In these experiments anger reactions more consistently elicited generous offers from a participant, but Lelieveld’s team have also published work showing that the effects of anger also fluctuate, dependent on how powerful the counterpart is perceived to be. The takeaway is that emotions don’t have a deterministic effect on negotiation behaviour, but generate different influences depending on the framing of a situation.

Gert-Jan Lelieveld, Eric Van Dijk, Ilja Van Beest, & Gerben A. Van Kleef (2013). Does Communicating Disappointment in Negotiations Help or Hurt? Solving an Apparent Inconsistency in the Social-Functional Approach to Emotions Journal of Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0033345


Further reading:
Morris, M. W., & Keltner, D. (2000). How emotions work: An analysis of
the social functions of emotional expression in negotiations. Research in
Organizational Behavior, 22, 1–50. doi:10.1016/S0191-3085(00)22002-9

Subgroups in teams: when two is the worst number

Every team contains the seed of the subgroup – a group that forms within a group. Common interests, background, or habits may lead some people to interact in their own specific dynamic. There isn't yet a research consensus on the consequences of subgroups, but happily a new paper by Andrew Carton and Jonathon Cummings helps us understand the context in which there can be benefits or burdens.

One area that researchers agree on is the disruptive nature of especially strong fault lines: deep differences between team members that allow subgroups to emerge. If a minority of a group are white, young, female, and of a technical background, and the remainder share none of those attributes, the team are likely to be fragmented and performance will suffer . But before now other questions have remained unanswered: is it worse to have more or fewer subgroups? And is it better if they are balanced, of a similar size?

The study looked at 326 teams from a food service and processing company, all participants in an internal tournament to demonstrate excellence through actions like developing better customer service. Carton and Cummings developed an algorithm that examined several possible fault lines in each team to determine whether it contains subgroups, and if so, how many and on what basis. These subgroup features were then related to how the team performed in the tournament.

The researchers predicted that number and balance of subgroups have different effects depending on the fault lines that define them. Identity-based fault lines, including age and gender,  are strong lines that can encourage in-group/out-group thinking. As expected, groups that contained two, evenly matched identity-based subgroups performed worse than any other combination, as this 'us and them' situation can increase territoriality, where both sides feel threatened by the other.

Knowledge-based fault lines occur when a subgroup shares different sources of information, such as when they have a different reporting channel in the business. These lack overt in-group cues, and  so they’re less disruptive. In fact  they offer multiple perspectives – handy for solving problems. As predicted, the more of these, the better, and more so when the groups were balanced in number, as this reduces the likelihood that voices are discounted.

The categorisation of subgroups by algorithm, without any validation, seems a limitation of the study. We don't actually know if team 23 actually had two subgroups based on gender, only that the algorithm was satisfied there would be. I would like to see follow-up work that verifies the finding is genuinely due to grouping factors, not the mix of members in a more general sense. Nevertheless, it takes us a step closer to understanding team performance, and how decisions about team composition can have emergent effects upon performance.

Carton AM, & Cummings JN (2013). The impact of subgroup type and subgroup configurational properties on work team performance. The Journal of applied psychology, 98 (5), 732-58 PMID: 23915429

Further reading:
Cohen, S. G., & Bailey, D. E. (1997). What makes teams work: Group effectiveness research from the shop floor to the executive suite. Journal of Management, 23, 239 –290. DOI:10.1177/014920639702300303
 

Reshape your job to get more of what you want

It's possible to proactively shape our job to get more of what we want , but harder to shed the hassles we don't. So suggests a new study on job crafting, the process of realigning your own work duties and environment to be better for you.

The study looked at two elements of work – demands and resources – which we've discussed before . Demands are twofold: unhelpful and costly hindrances like emotionally tiring activities; and challenges such as high workload, which can be beneficial by ramping up motivation (this is the stance taken in the current study). The other type of job characteristic is the job resource: a helpful feature that can be structural, like opportunities to build skills, or social, such as receiving support from co-workers.

An Erasmus University team led by Maria Tims measured job demands and resources in a sample of 288 chemical plant workers, and all participants received feedback on their scores in every area, together with standardised advice on how one might improve in each. One month later, the researchers visited the sample again to survey any changes participants had elected to make; a month after that, demands and resources were measured again.

Participants who had elected to craft their job in ways related to resources – e.g. 'Last month, I tried to do new things at work' showed an increase in that resource by the final time point. Wellbeing measures, taken at the start and end of the study, showed that crafting of either social or structural resources led to higher work engagement and satisfaction, and lower burnout; this effect was explained by the increase in resources.

Participants were much less active in trying to craft job demands, and the efforts they made didn't shift the amount of demand experienced at the final time point. The only effect found was that crafting challenging demands led to lower burnout; the authors explanation for this is that the mere fact of engaging in job crafting might affect wellbeing even before any concrete improvements are seen.

Job redesign is a fascinating area, and this paper represents a current of growing interest in the bottom-up crafting actions that employees can take to improve their own conditions. The findings suggest that for those in a role, it's an easier task to develop your resources than to reduce the demands placed upon you. As a consequence, Tims's team conclude that 'management interventions should focus more on the effects of job demands on employee well-being', to deal with the factors that are more difficult to budge from the bottom.

Tims M, Bakker AB, & Derks D (2013). The impact of job crafting on job demands, job resources, and well-being. Journal of occupational health psychology, 18 (2), 230-40 PMID: 23506549

Further reading:
Crawford, E. R., LePine, J. A., & Rich, B. L. (2010). Linking job demands and resources to employee engagement and burnout: A theoretical extension and meta-analytic test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 834 – 848. doi:10.1037/a0019364

A non-native accent makes it harder to get hired or funded

One in 33 people work in a country other than their birth country. In most cases, these people's communications carry a mark of their foreignness, in the form of a non-native accent. In a new  study, Laura Huang, Marcia Frideger and Jone Pearce investigate how accent amounts to a glass ceiling for high performing non-natives that prevents them from obtaining elite positions.

In a first experiment , 179 principally White and Asian students were asked to listen to audio recordings of a candidate interviewed for a middle management role, where the script was always the same. However, the photo on the candidate CV showed the candidate to be either White or Asian in appearance, and the accent of the actor playing the candidate on the audio was either native US, or non-native: Japanese-sounding for the Asian photo, Russian-sounding for the White photo. Afterwards participants rated the candidate on a number of measures, including their recommendation of whether to hire.

Participants gave stronger hiring endorsements to candidates with native accents, regardless of race. This alone could reflect a perception that the speakers were hard to understand (although their words were identical), or a gut animosity toward an outgroup member. But Huang’s team believed that people make a specific attribution about non-native accents – that the person lacks political skill. After all, past evidence suggests people associate these accents with lower social awareness and levels of persuasion, both necessary for politicking. And prejudices are safer expressed by criticising something as nebulous and subjective as political skill. As predicted, native-accent candidates were ranked as having more political skill, and this mediated the hiring recommendations. No such effect was found for ratings of communication, nor of collaboration, which one would expect to be affected if participants were generally denigrating outgroup members.

In a second experiment, the authors showed the effect to extend to investment decisions. Participants coded 90 videos of genuine pitches made by entrepreneurs at a funding event, only 30 of which led to offers of funding. Entrepreneurs with non-native accents were less likely to receive funding, with race again having no bearing. True to form, political skill as judged by the coders tracked the success of the pitches, whereas communication and collaborative skill did not. This study is especially important considering that ambitious non-natives anticipating glass ceilings in organisations may decide to start their own; this result suggests they may still face similar impediments.

The researchers conclude that  'the ambiguity and importance of political skill make it an attractive ostensibly meritocratic reason to block non-native speakers from executive positions'. They suggest that those faced with these impediments could anticipate, name, and allay these concerns, highlighting their political skills to decision-makers. And those decision-makers should themselves become conscious of this bias to prevent hasty attributions.

Huang L, Frideger M, & Pearce JL (2013). Political Skill: Explaining the Effects of Nonnative Accent on Managerial Hiring and Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions. The Journal of Applied Psychology PMID: 23937299

Further reading:
Gluszek, A. & Dovidio, J. F. (2010). The way they speak: A social psychological perspective on the stigma on nonnative accents in communication. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14: 214-237.
 

Business travel strain is higher for destinations very different from home

Anyone who's done a reasonable amount of business travel knows the strain it can put you under. According to a recent paper, that strain increases when the norms and beliefs of the travel destination are very different from those at home.

In the International Journal of Stress Management, Jase Ramsey details a newly developed instrument for measuring 'Institutional Distance' for business travellers. Institutional theory sees any environment as composed of three elements: the regulatory rules and laws that restrict behaviour; a set of normative traditions, habits and assumptions; and the cognitive categories that shape how things are perceived. Ramsey built these elements into a scale that probes  business travellers’ perception that their endpoint is different from home. Examples include differences between beliefs in profitability (cognitive) and willingness to put in overtime (normative).

After trialling and refining the scale, Ramsey took his new scale, combined with measures of travel and job strain, to Guarulhos International Airport to survey 457 business travellers, of whom just over half were Brazilian. Participants reported experiencing more strain for more institutionally distant endpoints. The travel strain measure, which covers air travel anxiety and anger together with airline (dis)trust, was most strongly related to perceptions of normative distance. This makes some sense as norms dictate whether to queue or crowd, banter with security officials or keep quiet, and so on. Meanwhile the job strain measure was more related to cognitive distance: this seems to describe the traveller's anxiety whether they are adequately equipped to understand the agendas and priorities of those they are meeting.

Two issues to note. Regulatory distance was actually associated with lower job strain, which was unpredicted and essentially unexplained. Additionally, by drawing all its data from the subjective judgments of  participants, the study is vulnerable to common method bias. For instance it may be that some travellers tend to over-estimate both perceptions of distance and of current stress. Nonetheless, this is strong initial work developing a scale that could be used  fruitfully to help us understand the psychological consequences of business travel. The hallmarks of a stressful situation are high stakes and demands that may exceed our resources to deal with them; I can't think of a better description of a three-stop hop to Singapore.

Jase R. Ramsey (2013). Institutional Distance: A Measurement Validation and Link to Job and International Business Travel Strain International Journal of Stress Management DOI: 10.1037/a0033253

Further reading:
DeFrank, R. S., Konopaske, R., & Ivancevich, J. M. (2000). Executive travel stress: Perils of the road warrior. Academy of Management Executive, 14, 58.

Advice taking is influenced by how you feel, and who you're feeling it toward

Work presents us with many sources of advice, from managers, coaches and consultants, to our colleagues and friends. Advice often leads to better decisions, but we're not always prepared to take it. Recent research has suggested a role for emotion: for instance, feeling angry makes us less likely to follow advice.
Now a new study by Ilona de Hooge, Peeter Verlegh and Stefanie Tzioti suggests that this comes down to two emotional properties: yes, positive or negative valence is crucial, but its influence depends on whether the emotion is directed inwards or towards another person.

The researchers ran five experiments, each with 50-120 undergraduates individually engaging with tasks through a computer screen. In both experiments one and two, either a positive or negative emotion was induced in each participant, who then had to select one of two activities to perform, one of which had been recommended by a 'co-participant' (actually a scripted part of the experiment).

In experiment one, the participants were induced to experience emotion directed at their advice-giving co-participant: in the gratitude condition, the co-participant had just solved a tough problem to earn both players a prize; in the anger condition they missed the prize by fluffing an easy problem, even though the real participant had urged them to adjust their answer.

In experiment two, the emotions induced in participants were directed inward, by the announcement - again to a fictional, computer generated group of co-participants - of contrived intelligence test results that either induced shame or pride in the participant.

When directed outward, positive emotion (i.e. gratitude), as compared with negative, encouraged advice-taking . What you feel about another person provides quick and dirty information about whether you find them capable or believe they have your best interests at heart. If you don't, best not to rely on them. But induced emotion was directed inward, the reverse effect was found, with negative emotion being associated with greater advice taking – just as de Hooge and her colleagues predicted. Self-directed emotion gives a shorthand for judging your own current capability and readiness to take action. If you feel bad about yourself, perhaps it's better to listen to others.

Maybe the effect was driven by tactics, not emotion -  if you think another is particularly smart, you're more willing to follow their lead. Subsequent experiments decoupled the emotion from the true capability of the co-participant, and expanded the decision task from a binary A-or-B to an estimate task (how much will this product sell?). Participants now recalled an autobiographical experience that involved one of the four emotions (such as pride), and were asked to associate this feeling with the co-participant before hearing their estimate and making a final decision. The data showed the same pattern as with the four previous emotions – advice taking increased for shame compared to pride, and gratitude compared to anger.

The experiments also showed that recalling a case of anger directed inward increased advice taking, whereas anger outward decreased it, and found weaker but marginally significant effects when emotion labels such as shame were done away with altogether, allowing participants to remember a generalised negative self-focused emotion in its place. This suggests that it is the valence-directionality combination that is critical, rather than idiosyncratic qualities of the specific emotions used.

A better understanding of how we become receptive to advice is going to lead to better decisions. We may need to think harder about how to reach people in different states; as the authors conclude, 'people experiencing negative, self-focused emotions such as shame or sadness might be the most likely to follow advice but may also be the least likely to seek advice in the first place.'

Ilona E. de Hooge, Peeter W. J. Verlegh, and Stephanie C. Tzioti (2013). Emotions in Advice Taking: The Roles of Agency and Valence Journal of Behavioral Decision Making DOI: 10.1002/bdm.1801

Further reading:
Bonaccio, S., & Dalal, R. S. (2006). Advice taking and decision making: An integrative literature review, and implications for the organizational sciences. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 101, 127–151.
 

A positive mindset on joining a group boosts your longer-term status

Status: a formal feature of many workplaces, an informal part of every workplace. We form pecking orders that influence who calls the shots, who gets heard, and who gets applauded or rewarded. Essentially a matter of perception, status can be influenced by rank, demographic, background, as well as race, gender, and age. A new article suggests that status is also influenced by style of behaviour when we join a group, and that these behaviours can be activated by a simple change in mindset.

Researchers Gavid Kilduff and Adam Galinsky were interested in priming, how exposure to something can change how we respond to events that follow, like seeing people as 'warm' after holding a warm drink, or  physically slowing after reading about elderly people (an effect now under some scrutiny).  As priming operates via mental states, which fluctuate day-to-day, if not minute-to-minute, we normally expect their effects to be similarly short-term. However, Kilduff and Galinsky proposed that effects that boost status during a group's formation could get locked-in for the lifetime of the group. If I'm struck by Sheila as having top-dog potential, I'll ask her perspective more often and put more faith in her opinions, and these prophecies become self-fulfilling.

The research focused on mental states that involve an 'approach orientation', where the individual is drawn to exploring and meeting people, problems, or environments, as opposed to a conservative 'avoidance orientation'. Approach orientation is associated with confidence, activity, and goal-oriented behaviour, the sorts of things that are habitual to extraverts and trait-dominant people, people who tend to take higher status roles. In some senses it is a 'state' version of the extraversion trait. Could it give the same status benefits?

The first study established this was possible - at least in the short-term - by priming their 57 student participants by asking them to write a few paragraphs on either their commute to work (No priming), their current duties and obligations (Avoidance), or their ambitions and aspirations (Approach). Then one student from each condition met as a trio for a twenty minute session in which they tackled an open-ended task (ranking the importance of items to a new business). The participants gave higher anonymous status ratings to team members who had been primed with the approach orientation task. The group also agreed (through ratings) that these Approach individuals showed more proactive behaviour during the meeting, which appeared to mediate and explain the status bonus.

The second study replicated and extended the first using a different element of approach orientation: where the previous study had focused on 'promotion focus', this one primed the state of feeling powerful, by asking this group to write on a situation where they had power over others, versus being disempowered or the same neutral condition as before.  Again, ratings following the group decision task showed that individuals in the power condition were awarded higher status and engaged in more proactive behaviours, behaviours now measured by blind coders observing video of the interaction. Two days later, the group was reassembled for another decision task with no further mindset manipulations. Those who had initially been in the Power condition continued to get a status advantage. These participants had provided personality data, and analysis suggested this Time 2 benefit to status was greatest for those lower in extraversion.

The final study replicated this two-stage approach by priming happiness, unhappiness or neutral thoughts in the writing exercise. As well as rating status, participants at the second meeting were asked to secretly apportion points between themselves and their two team members, points that contributed to chances of winning a financial prize. Participants originally assigned to the Happiness condition received more points at this second stage, in addition to higher status ratings. This use of an additional, novel metric goes some way to heading off a potential criticism of the research design, which is that Time 2 status ratings may be anchored by the Time 1 ratings. All these effects were  stable even when controlling for Extraversion, Trait Dominance and Trait Positive Affect, more durable individual features that affect status.

This research suggests a kind of butterfly effect, where small differences in initial mindset can echo through a group's interactions and shape their status relationships in a way that remains, even days later. A short-term change of mindset is relatively easy - the manipulation in this experiment is trivially easy to do yourself - especially compared to trying to alter personality states, never mind demographics. The suggestive finding that mindset could matter more for those less extraverted, who take status less naturally, makes this finding empowering.

Kilduff GJ, & Galinsky AD (2013). From the Ephemeral to the Enduring: How Approach-Oriented Mindsets Lead to Greater Status. Journal of personality and social psychology PMID: 23895266

  
Further reading: 
Driskell, J. E., & Mullen, B. (1990). Status, expectations, and behavior: A meta-analytic review and test of the theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16, 541–553.