Anchors weigh more than power: why absolute powerlessness liberates negotiators to achieve better outcomes

Relationships Between Power, Communication About Work and Sex, and Emotion Expression: A Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Analysis

Few experiences direct affect, behavior, and cognition as thoroughly as feelings of power and powerlessness. The present study examined 403 participants' narrated experiences feeling powerful (n = 196) or powerless (n = 207) using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) analysis to identify social contexts that might explain the effects of power on emotion expression. Powerful narratives contained more frequent communication about work, whereas powerless narratives contained more frequent communication about sex. Moreover, powerless narratives conveyed greater negative emotionality. A parallel mediation analysis revealed that communication about work and sex helped to explain the association between self-reported feelings of power and expressions of negative emotionality. When participants felt powerful and communicated about work, they expressed lower negative emotionality; when participants felt powerless and communicated about sex, they expressed higher negative emotionality. Modest differences in emotional expression between women and men indicated that power research should report analyses including gender as a control variable. Findings provide direction to the next wave of power research, which should examine organizations and intimate relationships as contexts in which power dynamics are salient.

When advisors do not know what is best for advisees: Uncertainty inhibits advice giving

While seeking advice can be beneficial for advisees, advisors may not always possess the necessary knowledge to provide appropriate guidance. Poor-quality advice can mislead advisees rather than offering assistance. Despite the research interest in advisees, few studies have investigated advisors' psychological and behavioral responses, especially when they faced uncertainty regarding the optimal course of action for advisees. To fill this gap, we developed novel paradigms aiming at manipulating advisors' uncertainty, allowing for a systematic investigation of advisors' behavior, motivation, and emotion. Across four studies, we consistently found that advisors under uncertainty give less advice. Furthermore, we observed that uncertainty modulates advisors' motivation to influence, worry about harm to others, and/or sense of power. The motivation to influence and/or worry about harm to others can mediate the effect of uncertainty on advice giving. Besides, we identified nuanced distinctions in the effects of ambiguity and risk, two distinct types of uncertainty, on advisors' psychological processes. Our findings shed light on advisors' self-monitoring of the quality of their advice, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of advisor-advisee communication from the perspective of advisors.

Embracing Complexity: A Review of Negotiation Research

In this review, we identify emerging trends in negotiation scholarship that embrace complexity, finding moderators of effects that were initially described as monolithic, examining the nuances of social interaction, and studying negotiation as it occurs in the real world. We also identify areas in which research is lacking and call for scholarship that offers practical advice. All told, the existing research highlights negotiation as an exciting context for examining human behavior, characterized by features such as strong emotions, an intriguing blend of cooperation and competition, the presence of fundamental issues such as power and group identity, and outcomes that deeply affect the trajectory of people's personal and professional lives.

Buyers, Maybe Moving Second Is Not That Bad After All: Low-Power, Anxiety, and Making Inferior First Offers

The behavioral decision-making and negotiations literature usually advocates a first-mover advantage, explained the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Thus, buyers, who according to the social norm, tend to move second, strive to make the first offer to take advantage of this effect. On the other hand, negotiation practitioners and experts often advise the opposite, i.e., moving second. These opposite recommendations regarding first offers are termed the Practitioner-Researcher paradox. In the current article, we investigate the circumstances under which buyers would make less favorable first offers than they would receive were they to move second, focusing on low power and anxiety during negotiations. Across two studies, we manipulated negotiators' best alternative to the negotiated agreement (BATNA) and measured their anxiety. Our results show that, when facing neutral-power sellers, weak buyers who feel anxious would make inferior first offers (Studies 1 and 2). When facing low-power sellers, weak buyers would make inferior first offers across all anxiety levels (Study 2). Our findings shed light on two critical factors leading to the Practitioner-Researcher paradox: power and anxiety, and offer concrete guidelines to buyers who find themselves at low power and highly anxious during negotiations.

Power and negotiation: review of current evidence and future directions

This review synthesizes the impact of power on individual and joint negotiation performance. Although power generally has positive effects on negotiators' individual performance (value claiming), recent work suggests that more power is not always beneficial. Taking a dyadic perspective, we also find mixed evidence for how power affects joint performance (value creation); some studies show that equal-power dyads create more value than unequal-power dyads, but others find the opposite. We identify the source of power, power distribution, and competitiveness as critical moderators of this relationship. Finally, we suggest that future research should move beyond studying alternatives in dyadic deal-making, identify strategies to overcome a lack of power,increase empirical realism, and take a more dynamic view of power in negotiations.

Why do people spend money to help vulnerable people?

Prosocial spending has been linked to positive benefits for individuals and societies. However, little is known about the precursors of prosocial spending directed to vulnerable people. We experimentally tested the effect of a first exposure to a prosocial donation decision on subsequent prosocial spending. We also examined the direct links from eudaimonic well-being beliefs (contribution-to-others and self-development) to prosocial spending, as well as the interaction between these beliefs and autonomy in predicting the money given. A total of 200 individuals participated in the study. Results showed that, compared to two control groups (“totally self-focused” and “no first-exposure”), an initial exposure to a prosocial donation decision increases subsequent prosocial spending. In addition, we observed an anchoring bias from the initial prosocial donation to subsequent prosocial spending. Regression analyses also confirmed the existence of a positive significant relationship between contribution-to-others beliefs and prosocial spending. Finally, we observed a significant interaction between autonomy and self-development well-being beliefs, such that autonomy strengthens the link from self-development beliefs to prosocial spending. In general, our results confirmed the significant role of exposure, anchoring, autonomy, and well-being beliefs in predicting the money spent to help vulnerable people.

When your anchor sinks your boat: Information asymmetry in distributive negotiations and the disadvantage of making the first offer

The literature on behavioral decision-making and negotiations to date usually advocates first-mover advantage in distributive negotiations, and bases this preference on the anchoring heuristic. In the following paper, we suggest that the preference for moving first vs. moving second in negotiations may not be as clear-cut as presumed, especially in situations characterized by information asymmetry between negotiating counterparts. In Study 1, we examined people’s initiation preferences and found that unless taught otherwise, people intuitively often prefer to move second. In Studies 2–4, we experimentally tested the suggested advantage of moving second, and demonstrated that in information-asymmetry scenarios – when one party has perfect background information and the other has none — it is actually preferable for both counterparts not to give the first offer while negotiating. We discuss the implications of our findings on the field of negotiation and decision-making, and lay the groundwork for future studies examining this issue.

Adaptive Appraisals of Anxiety Moderate the Association between Cortisol Reactivity and Performance in Salary Negotiations

Prior research suggests that stress can be harmful in high-stakes contexts such as negotiations. However, few studies actually measure stress physiologically during negotiations, nor do studies offer interventions to combat the potential negative effects of heightened physiological responses in negotiation contexts. In the current research, we offer evidence that the negative effects of cortisol increases on negotiation performance can be reduced through a reappraisal of anxiety manipulation. We experimentally induced adaptive appraisals by randomly assigning 97 male and female participants to receive either instructions to appraise their anxiety as beneficial to the negotiation or no specific instructions on how to appraise the situation. We also measured participants' cortisol responses prior to and following the negotiation. Results revealed that cortisol increases were positively related to negotiation performance for participants who were told to view anxiety as beneficial, and not detrimental, for negotiation performance (appraisal condition). In contrast, cortisol increases were negatively related to negotiation performance for participants given no instructions on appraising their anxiety (control condition). These findings offer a means through which to combat the potentially deleterious effects of heightened cortisol reactivity on negotiation outcomes.

Semantic cross-scale numerical anchoring

Anchoring effects are robust, varied and can be consequential. Researchers have provided a variety of alternative explanations for these effects. More recently, it has become apparent that anchoring effects might be produced by a variety of different processes, either acting simultaneously, or else individually in distinct situations. An unresolved issue is whether anchoring, aside from simple numeric priming, can transcend scales. That is, is it necessary that the anchor value and the target judgment are expressed in the same units? Despite some theoretical predictions to the contrary, this paper demonstrates semantic cross-scale anchoring in four experiments. Such effects are important for the direction of future theorising on the causes of anchoring effects and understanding the scope of their consequences in applied domains.

The Too-Much-Precision Effect

Past research has suggested a fundamental principle of price precision: The more precise an opening price, the more it anchors counteroffers. The present research challenges this principle by demonstrating a too-much-precision effect. Five experiments (involving 1,320 experts and amateurs in real-estate, jewelry, car, and human-resources negotiations) showed that increasing the precision of an opening offer had positive linear effects for amateurs but inverted-U-shaped effects for experts. Anchor precision backfired because experts saw too much precision as reflecting a lack of competence. This negative effect held unless first movers gave rationales that boosted experts’ perception of their competence. Statistical mediation and experimental moderation established the critical role of competence attributions. This research disentangles competing theoretical accounts (attribution of competence vs. scale granularity) and qualifies two putative truisms: that anchors affect experts and amateurs equally, and that more precise prices are linearly more potent anchors. The results refine current theoretical understanding of anchoring and have significant implications for everyday life.