Motivated by guilt and low felt trust: The impact of negotiators' anger expressions on the implementation of negotiated agreements

Abstract

Prior research has identified benefits from certain emotion tactics in negotiation, particularly expressing anger to achieve short‐term gains. We demonstrate that such tactics can be strategically problematic due to their impact on an actor's emotions and felt trust. Through five studies, we find that negotiators' use of anger tactics during a negotiation increased their feelings of guilt and reduced the extent to which they felt trusted by their counterpart following the negotiation. We found this guilt to be the result of their aggressive tone and how they treated their counterpart. The guilt and diminished felt trust in turn motivated negotiators to engage in greater cooperative behaviors during the deal implementation process that benefited their counterpart, even if doing so was costly to the negotiator. Our results demonstrate that negotiator guilt and felt trust resulting from anger tactics influence the dynamic relationship between negotiators and their counterparts. This in turn has strategic implications for negotiators, who attempt to mitigate these negative feelings during the crucial implementation phase of a negotiated agreement.

Tactical anger in negotiation: The expresser's perspective

“…Consistent with results suggesting anger expression results in value claiming if the situation requires both cooperation and competition (Adam & Brett, 2015), Hypothesis 1a holds that negotiators instructed to express anger would claim more value represented in the negotiated agreement than those instructed to express no emotion to their counterpart. Consistent with the observation that anger expression does not yield tangible benefit when real monetary stakes are deployed in a two-sided negotiation (Campagna et al, 2016(Campagna et al, , 2019, Hypothesis 1b is that negotiators instructed to express anger will not claim more value than those instructed to express no emotion to their counterpart. Anger may also hinder the formation of trust, which is critical to investing effort in the implementation phase (Campagna et al, 2016(Campagna et al, , 2019Mislin et al, 2011).…”

“…Consistent with the observation that anger expression does not yield tangible benefit when real monetary stakes are deployed in a two-sided negotiation (Campagna et al, 2016(Campagna et al, , 2019, Hypothesis 1b is that negotiators instructed to express anger will not claim more value than those instructed to express no emotion to their counterpart. Anger may also hinder the formation of trust, which is critical to investing effort in the implementation phase (Campagna et al, 2016(Campagna et al, , 2019Mislin et al, 2011). Thus, Hypothesis 2 was that expressing anger will diminish effort expended in implementing the contract, an effect mediated by trust.…”

When anger and happiness generate concessions: investigating counterpart’s culture and negotiation intentions

“…Previous research shows that anger may have negative effects on negotiators after the negotiation is concluded (Campagna et al, 2019). This idea raises some interesting questions about the long-term effects of anger in cross-cultural negotiations.…”

“…Recent research suggests that strategic displays of anger can have negative consequences for deal implementation (Campagna et al, 2019). Therefore, managers should be aware that they could be prone to concessions when facing an angry negotiator from a foreign country and they should not concede so easily.…”

Exploring fear of appearing incompetent, competency pressure, tactics and perceptions in negotiations

“…Early research in the area of negotiation largely ignored emotions in the negotiation process and focused primarily on a rational decision-making approach (Barry, 1999;Barry and Oliver, 1996;Thompson et al, 2004). Over the last two decades, a clear shift in the literature has taken place; emotions have become a major focus of empirical research in the field of negotiation (Campagna et al, 2019;Lelieveld et al, 2012). Although previous research focused on a broad range of emotions (Druckman and Olekalns, 2008), for example, anger and happiness (Van Kleef et al, 2004), general anxiety or relational anxiety (Brooks and Schweitzer, 2011), disappointment (Lelieveld et al, 2012) and discrete emotion detection (Laubert and Parlamis, 2019), we contend that, in particular, one variable warrants greater examination because of its relevance to negotiation and business dealings: fear of appearing incompetent (FAI).…”