Motivational Bases Of Information Processing and Strategy in Conflict and Negotiation

The chapter reviews the settings and research paradigms to illustrate that in some conflicts and in some negotiation settings some motives are more likely to emerge than in other settings. It also reviews past research on cognitive and motivational processes in conflict and negotiation, and introduces defensiveness and naive realism as barriers to dispute resolution. The chapter discusses the antecedents and consequences of social and epistemic motivation, respectively, and considers their influence on information processing biases and strategic choice. It presents the motivated information processing model and discusses the possibility that motives change during the negotiation. The motivated information processing model captures the influence of many variables—situational features such as power differences or time pressure, and individual differences in social value, cultural background, or need for cognitive closure—on cognitive processes and economic and psychological outcomes in conflict and negotiation. The chapter closes with alternative models of information processing and strategic choice in conflict and negotiation.