Weep and get more: When and why sadness expression is effective innegotiations

Marwan Sinaceur, Shirli Kopelman, Dimitri Vasiljevic and Christophe Haag ()
Additional contact information
Marwan Sinaceur: ESSEC Business School
Shirli Kopelman: University of Michigan System
Dimitri Vasiljevic: NEOMA - Neoma Business School
Christophe Haag: EM - EMLyon Business School

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Although recently some research has been accumulated on emotional expressions in negotiations, there is little research on whether expressing sadness could have any effect in negotiations. We propose that sadness expressions can increase the expressers' ability to claim value in negotiations because they make recipients experience greater other-concern for the expresser. However, only when the social situation provides recipients with reasons to experience concern for the expresser in the first place, will recipients act on their other-concern and, eventually, concede more to a sad expresser. Three experiments tested this proposition by examining face-to-face, actual negotiations (in which participants interacted with each other). In all 3 experiments, recipients conceded more to a sad expresser when, but only when, features of the social situation provided reasons to experience other-concern for the expresser, namely (a) when recipients perceived the expresser as low power (Experiment 1), (b) when recipients anticipated a future interaction (Experiment 1), (c) when recipients construed the relationship as collaborative in nature (Experiment 2), or (d) when recipients believed that it was inappropriate to blame others (Experiment 3). All 3 experiments showed that the positive effect of sadness expression was mediated by the recipients' greater other-concern. These findings extend previous research on emotional expressions in negotiations by emphasizing a distinct psychological mechanism. Implications for our understanding of sadness, negotiations, and emotions are discussed.

Keywords: sadness; negotiation; conflict; emotion; other-concern (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-11-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Journal of Applied Psychology, 2015, 100 (6), 1847-1871 p. ⟨10.1037/a0038783⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02313262

DOI: 10.1037/a0038783

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().