With Feeling: How Emotions Shape Negotiation

Abstract

The role played by emotions in negotiation is an increasingly popular topic. This chapter synthesizes current research around four broad themes: moves and exchanges, information processing, social interaction, and context. The authors’ review reveals that much of the research on this topic has focused on two key emotions, anger and happiness. More recently, negotiators have turned to other emotions such as guilt and disappointment, demonstrating that not all negative emotions have the same consequences or activate the same regions of the brain. Focusing on social interaction, the authors note that negotiators may influence each others’ emotions: Whether negotiators converge to anger or happi..