Alison Ledgerwood
Shannon P. Callahan
Shelly Chaiken
The focus of this chapter is on persuasion and attitude change in negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution. Persuasion refers to the principles and processes by which people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are formed, modified, or resist change in the face of others’ attempts at influence. These attempts are designed to convince targets of persuasion to accept a position on some issue that differs from their current position.
Importantly, persuasion is distinct from coercion in that persuasion involves influence designed to change people’s minds, whereas coercion involves influence designed to change people’s behavior (with little regard for whether they have actually changed their minds). For example, in a conflict between labor and management, company employees might attempt to persuade the managers to raise wages by pointing out that higher wages will increase motivation and commitment among workers, thereby benefiting the company as a whole. Alternatively, they might attempt to coerce the managers to raise wages by threatening to strike if their demands are not met. Research on social influence has established that if public compliance is not accompanied by private acceptance (in this case, truly believing that there is good reason to raise wages), the outcomes of influence are typically ephemeral and unstable. (See Eagly and Chaiken, 1993.) Persuasion is therefore a critical tool in creating lasting settlements between parties in conflict.
Although participants in negotiations often bring an impressive amount of implicit knowledge to the conflict resolution setting, an increased understanding of the principles and processes that underlie persuasion can help improve the processes and outcomes of a negotiation. In this chapter, we review major theories and findings in the field of persuasion, summarize relevant research in negotiation and intergroup settings, and discuss practical implications for conflict resolution.
Although theory and research on persuasion have been brought to bear on the study of negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution, they remain largely disconnected fields. As Malhotra and Bazerman (2008) noted, “The vast majority of writing on negotiation has ignored the element of interpersonal influence . . . [which] seems to be a glaring omission” (p. 510). In this chapter, we seek to bridge this gap by describing relevant theory and research in persuasion that has important and useful implications for research and practice in conflict settings.
We begin by providing a brief, foundational overview of persuasion theory and research. After illustrating the research paradigm that has guided both historical and contemporary approaches to persuasion, we discuss a broad theoretical perspective on persuasion (called a dual-process perspective) that distinguishes between two basic ways in which people think.
Before we discuss theory and research in persuasion, it is important to understand how research is typically conducted in this area of social psychology and how we can (and cannot) relate the results obtained in such settings to real-world situations such as negotiation. In this section, we describe the prototypical persuasion experiment, highlight key differences between the laboratory and the real world, and discuss how persuasion research has addressed this gap.
The prototypical persuasion study takes place in a university laboratory and investigates how exposure to persuasive messages influences an audience’s attitudes, beliefs, or behavioral intentions. These studies typically involve a message (information about a given issue), a source (the communicator of the message), and a recipient or target (the person receiving the persuasive message). Researchers then typically measure recipients’ attitudes toward the issue discussed and often perceptions of the source or freely generated thoughts about the issue. Most notably, such studies examine the extent to which message recipients’ attitudes move toward the position advocated in the message.
The issues addressed in such paradigmatic persuasion studies are wide ranging, including foreign affairs (e.g., whether Israel should withdraw from the West Bank); political and social issues (affirmative action, welfare policies); business and government proposals (retirement benefits, corporate mergers); and a host of more mundane issues of relevance to audience members’ work, school, or personal lives. The traditional paradigm allows experimenters to study how aspects of the source, the message, and the recipient influence attitude change. For example, research has established that persuasion tends to increase as the perceived trustworthiness, expertise, and likability of a source increase or as the number and strength of the arguments presented increase. (See Crano and Prislin, 2008; Eagly and Chaiken, 1993.)
Despite the range of issues and variables studied in persuasion research, the essential paradigm is somewhat constrained in its portrayal of natural persuasion settings. A one-way, source-to-recipient model of persuasion reflects only some of the contexts in which social influence occurs. Although it might afford an accurate picture of persuasion through exposure to public media such as television, newspaper, and the Internet, it is unlikely to capture the dynamic aspects of persuasion that occur in the kinds of interpersonal interaction that characterize negotiations.
In contrast to the one-shot, one-way message transmissions used in the persuasion paradigm, conflict and conflict resolution involve dynamic, repeated interactions between sources and recipients who together engage in bidirectional, mutual attempts at persuasion. In addition, attempts at influence may be directed not only at one’s opponent, but also at the groups represented by each party and at any mediators who might be present (and the mediator may meanwhile attempt to influence the negotiators). Moreover, the messages exchanged during negotiations often address multiple, related issues and the relations among them (such as order of priority) rather than single, independent ones. Finally, in negotiations, the parties are interdependent rather than autonomous: their outcomes depend on one another’s actions (Neale and Bazerman, 1991). These differences between the typical negotiation setting and the typical persuasion paradigm are important to bear in mind as we review the persuasion literature.
Persuasion researchers can and do study persuasion as it relates to complex social settings; they traditionally do so by adding layers of complexity to the basic paradigm described earlier. This involves introducing new variables that capture the essential features of particular settings. For example, researchers have examined the effects of direct interpersonal influence by leading study participants to expect an interaction with the message source. (See Bohner and Dickel, 2011; Eagly and Chaiken, 1993.)
The prototypical persuasion paradigm has therefore been treated as a skeletal framework onto which variables are often added to understand more fully the complex processes of persuasion. It is clear that the framework represents a simplification of social influence in real-life contexts. Nevertheless, we believe that the study of persuasion, using variations of its basic paradigm, can inform us about how attitude change occurs in a wide range of conflict resolution settings. The basic paradigm and its modifications permit us to address a host of issues manageably and to draw causal conclusions about the effects of particular variables. The leap from there to real-world conflict resolution settings is sizable but feasible, given good theory about both conflict and persuasion.
Theories of persuasion that explain how attitude change occurs as a result of two qualitatively different modes of processing are called dual-process theories. Dual-process theories have been influential in numerous domains of social psychology, including prejudice, stereotyping, and decision making (see Chaiken and Trope, 1999; Evans, 2008), and have also been applied in the negotiation domain (see de Dreu, 2004).
Our theoretical perspective, called the heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, and Chen, 1996; Chaiken and Ledgerwood, 2012), is one of several dual-process models proven to be important in social psychology. We treat this model simply as a perspective, borrowing terms and insights from other dual-process models as well. Our goal is to acquaint readers with dual-process models in general and exploit the general perspective these models offer for understanding conflict and negotiation.
Like other dual-process theories, the heuristic-systematic model proposes two distinct modes of information processing. Systematic processing involves attempts to thoroughly understand any information encountered through careful attention, deep thinking, and intensive reasoning about relevant stimuli (such as arguments, sources, and the causes of sources’ behavior) and to integrate this information as a basis for subsequent attitudes and behaviors. A systematic approach to processing information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might entail reading as many newspaper reports as possible to learn about the conflict and develop an opinion about the “best” course of action. Not surprisingly, such systematic thinking entails a great deal of mental effort, requiring both deliberate attention and allocation of mental resources. Thus, systematic processing is unlikely to occur unless a person is both able and motivated to do it.
Relative to systematic processing, heuristic processing is much less demanding in terms of the mental work required and much less dependent on adequate levels of personal or situational capacity (such as knowledge and time). In fact, heuristic processing has often been characterized as relatively automatic, in that it requires little cognitive effort and capacity (Chaiken and Trope, 1999). Heuristic processing involves focusing on salient and easily comprehended cues, such as a source’s credentials, the group membership of those endorsing an opinion, or the number of arguments presented. These cues activate well-learned decision rules known as heuristics. Examples are “experts know best,” “in-group but not out-group sources can be trusted,” and “argument length implies argument strength.” These simple associative rules allow judgments to be formed quickly and efficiently, with little additional cognitive processing. A heuristic approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might involve simply adopting the opinion of a noted political expert. Put simply, heuristics are the ifs in an if-then rule structure, and judgments are the thens (“If expert, then agree”).
Although heuristic processing is more superficial and systematic processing involves greater depth of detail, neither mode is necessarily more or less rational, and both can produce nonoptimal, poor, or biased judgments. In the case of heuristic processing, many of the mental rules of thumb that people use to make judgments have proven useful and reliable in the past and should presumably remain so in the present. Moreover, in a world that offers abundant information but too little time or opportunity to think in a detailed, systematic way about every decision, heuristic processing can be highly functional.
However, heuristic processing is obviously fallible. Experts can sometimes be wrong, one’s own group is not always right, and numerous reasons are not always good reasons. Thus, although heuristic processing can and often does produce reasonable judgments that people hold with relatively high confidence, it can sometimes produce judgments that are different—and subjectively poorer—from those that people would reach if they processed information more systematically. This is because systematic processing of persuasive appeals can increase both the breadth and depth of a person’s issue-relevant knowledge in ways that heuristic processing cannot.
Systematic processing involves sustained attention and information search. This can increase the depth of understanding about a particular issue or at least about a particular point of view. Moreover, when driven by a need for accuracy, systematic processing can involve more objective and even-handed thinking than heuristic processing, which tends to be biased in favor of prior judgments and habitual responses. Open-minded and accuracy-driven systematic thought can increase the breadth of knowledge about a given issue and, more important, about alternative perspectives from which it can be understood.
For example, systematic processing driven by accuracy motivation can lead to complex thought patterns that involve examining issues from multiple viewpoints and weighing the pros and cons of opposing perspectives. Research on cognitive complexity has established that a number of advantages are associated with this kind of reasoning, including diminished susceptibility to overconfidence and superior performance in group problem solving (Curşeu, Schruijer, and Boroş, 2011; Gruenfeld and Hollingshead, 1993). Of special relevance to conflict settings, cognitive complexity has been associated with increasing tolerance for alternative viewpoints, facilitating compromise, and identifying integrative solutions to conflict (Pruitt and Lewis, 1975; Winter, 2007). Individuals who process information in cognitively complex ways are thus often more effective in conflict and decision-making settings.
Importantly, systematic processing is more likely than heuristic processing to lead to deep, pervasive cognitive restructuring. This means that the cognitive changes that occur as a consequence of systematic processing are likely to persist, and thus affect future judgments and behavior, relative to the changes that accompany heuristic processing. (See Eagly and Chaiken, 1993; Petty and Wegener, 1998.) Hence, in the long run, open-minded systematic processing may well produce more optimal judgments than heuristic processing.
Although systematic processing is enduring, it is far from foolproof. This is because the cognitive effort associated with systematic processing does not necessarily mean that all possible information will be sought out and weighed in an open-minded, even-handed manner. In fact, sometimes systematic processing simply strengthens prior convictions. Systematic processing can be biased by both “cool” cognitive factors (such as a recipient’s existing attitudes) and, as discussed later, “hotter” motivational factors (such as a recipient’s goals or ideological commitments).
People’s current attitudes can exert a biasing effect at virtually all stages of information processing. Existing attitudes bias our attention to information in the environment (we tend to selectively seek and attend to information that confirms our existing attitudes), our interpretation of this information, and our memory for attitude-relevant information (see Albarracín, Johnson, and Zanna, 2005). The way our minds organize information often makes it easier for us to process information that is congenial to our own attitudes (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993, 1998). Thus, through the cool, cognitive process of critically thinking about a source’s arguments, perceivers may find themselves genuinely swayed by arguments that fit their preexisting beliefs and attitudes.
Importantly, even if perceivers engage in modest to high amounts of systematic processing, heuristics can provide another source of cognitive bias. For example, based on the heuristic that in-group sources tend to be correct, we often expect that politicians from our own political party will have more compelling and valid positions than politicians from an opposing political party. This heuristic-based expectation may guide systematic processing in a way that ends up confirming our initial expectation. As we attend to our own party’s arguments, we may perceive them to be compelling, and we may elaborate them in ways that make them even more convincing. In contrast, if we instead hear exactly the same arguments put forth by the opposing political party, we may think of various reasons that the arguments are flawed or unconvincing.
Researchers have identified three types of motives that influence how individuals process information. An accuracy motive is geared toward discovering what is correct. But thinking is not always accuracy driven and objective. Two other, “directional” motives are geared toward validating a particular judgment or stance: defense motivation is self-focused and egoistic, whereas impression motivation is other focused and relational (see Chaiken et al., 1996; Kunda, 1990).
The motivation to attain accurate judgments is pervasive in everyday life because we need to accurately understand the world around us in order to behave effectively. When accuracy motivation is present but not particularly high, people tend to look for heuristic cues that signal accuracy, such as source credibility. Indeed, communicators often seek to enhance others’ perceptions of them as trustworthy, expert, and likable because this provides heuristic information suggesting that the advocated position is accurate. However, if accuracy motivation increases, heuristic processing may be accompanied by systematic processing: if we want to be very confident that a judgment is correct, we are often uncomfortable making a snap decision based on a simple heuristic.
How much processing occurs, and thus whether heuristic or systematic processing dominates judgment, depends primarily on (1) the extent to which judgment-relevant heuristics are accessible (e.g., the “in-group sources can be trusted” heuristic may be particularly salient in conflict situations; see Chen and Chaiken, 1999; Ledgerwood and Chaiken, 2007); (2) the extent to which people have the time and mental resources necessary for systematic processing (in negotiations, anxiety or time constraints could decrease the capacity for systematic processing); and (3) the level of judgmental confidence that a perceiver desires. Assuming the first two factors are in place, our theoretical perspective predicts that people will process as little as possible but as much as necessary: in general, people want to satisfy their goals as efficiently as possible, without expending unnecessary effort. As the desired level of confidence increases, the minimal amount of processing necessary to reach this “sufficiency threshold” increases as well.
Thus, when accuracy motivation is modest (or when capacity is inadequate), heuristic cues such as source expertise and consensus opinion can exert a powerful influence on judgment—regardless of persuasive arguments or other information that might otherwise temper or reverse the heuristic-based judgment (Chaiken, Wood, and Eagly, 1996; Petty and Wegener, 1998). Ample systematic processing occurs only if accuracy motivation is higher—for example, if the issue is of great personal importance or the perceiver is accountable to others (and even then, accuracy-motivated systematic processing can still be biased by initial heuristics).
Although people usually assume that they are motivated to reach accurate judgments, they can also be motivated (usually without realizing it) by defense and impression concerns (Chaiken and Ledgerwood, 2012). Defense motivation compels people to process information in ways that protect and validate their own beliefs and interests. These beliefs could be about a person’s own valued qualities (“I’m intelligent”), ideological values (“Government should be as limited as possible”), or identity in valued groups (“Being Jewish is important to who I am”). These self-interests or self-definitional beliefs are defended because the perceiver feels, at least unconsciously, that overall personal integrity and well-being would be threatened if they were challenged.
When defense motivation is present but moderate, desired confidence, and therefore the amount of processing, is also moderate. Thus, heuristic processing dominates judgment—but defensively or selectively. In other words, since the goal of processing is to arrive at judgments that protect the self, heuristics are selected to the extent that they serve this goal. For example, if an expert source presented a short argument in favor of deporting illegal immigrants, you might invoke the heuristic “experts know best” if that position is congruent with your ideological values, whereas you might instead rely on the heuristic “argument length implies argument strength” if the short message contradicts your values and you want a reason to discount it.
When defense motivation is strong, additional systematic processing occurs until a person is sufficiently confident in her self-protective judgment. Like defense-motivated heuristic processing, defense-motivated systematic processing is also biased by a person’s favored position. For example, people tend to counterargue information that threatens their preferred position (Eagly, Kulesa, Chen, and Chaiken, 2001; Ledgerwood, Mandisodza, Jost, and Pohl, 2011).
The third broad motivational concern addressed by our perspective is impression motivation, which involves considering the interpersonal consequences of expressing a particular judgment in a given social context (such as in an interaction between two negotiators). Here, the target’s goal is to express positions that are socially acceptable to other people in their environment. As with defense motivation, impression-motivated processing is not necessarily self-conscious and is marked by a selective bias.
Impression-motivated heuristic processing entails selective application of heuristics that ensure a smooth interaction with specific others. On the one hand, when interacting with a person or group whose views on an issue are unknown or vague, a perceiver might invoke the heuristic “moderate judgment minimizes disagreement.” On the other hand, when others’ views are known, a “go along to get along” heuristic might better serve the same goal.
With sufficient cognitive capacity and higher levels of impression motivation, people may also process systematically but still selectively. Thus, a negotiating politician who is motivated to be well liked and respected by his constituents might think more favorably about an agreement that is likely to be popular among his constituents, and more critically about an agreement that is likely to be unpopular. Importantly, parties in conflict resolution are often concerned with the impressions they make on multiple audiences, and the content of the desired impressions may differ depending on the audience. For example, a negotiator seeking to resolve an international conflict may be motivated to look collaborative to the other party, tough and competent to his constituency, and dignified to the world at large. Which of these audiences is most salient at a given moment may influence which desired impression motivates the negotiator’s information processing.
Illustrating the importance of impression-motivated processing, Chen and Chaiken (1999) reported a study in which participants anticipated a discussion about a social issue with a partner who allegedly held either a favorable or an unfavorable opinion on the issue. Before this discussion, participants read “imagination scenarios” subtly designed to activate either the accuracy goal of determining a valid opinion or the impression goal of getting along with another person. After this task, participants familiarized themselves with the discussion issue by reading an evaluatively balanced essay concerning the issue (in this case, whether election returns should be broadcast while polls are still open). Participants then listed the thoughts that had occurred to them as they read the essay and indicated their own issue attitudes. Finally, they learned that there would be no actual discussion and were excused.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 settings. 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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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
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).
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.
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