Zero-sum beliefs, the belief that others gain at one’s own expense, are a well-documented barrier to cooperation. Previous research has conceptualized zero-sum beliefs as stable traits and studied them almost exclusively in artificial laboratory settings. In this proposal, we aim to address these gaps and develop an integrative theoretical framework to test the stability of zero-sum beliefs including their antecedents and consequences in employees’ daily work life. Drawing on interdependence theory, we argue that zero-sum beliefs vary from day to day, depending on work-related conditions, with detrimental downstream consequences for employee social undermining behavior. The proposed Study 1 will use a correlational experience sampling design with three daily measurement points to assess how daily time pressure, threat appraisal, and job insecurity affect daily zero-sum beliefs. As behavioral consequences, we will then test how daily zero-sum beliefs affect social undermining in the forms of interaction avoidance, knowledge hiding, and instigated incivility. Proposed Study 2 will experimentally test two selected micro-interventions to reduce daily zero-sum beliefs and evaluate their efficacy in an experimental experience sampling study. The proposed project advances research on zero-sum beliefs at work and tests whether targeted micro-interventions can mitigate their detrimental consequences for cooperation in organizations. 

Many important social issues of our times involve conflicts of interests that require joint decision making between conflicting parties via negotiations. Over the past five decades, negotiation research has made a constant effort to explore psychological processes that impact conflict resolution on the social level. However, overlooked by most negotiation research is the fact that many conflicts do not only involve divergent interests across parties but also involve divergent interests across time. That is, parties may not only perceive a conflict of interests between their own and their counterparts’ interests (i.e., interpersonal conflict), but also between their own interests in the present and their own interests in the future (i.e., intrapersonal conflict). Such intrapersonal conflicts have been intensely studied in decision-making research, yet, hardly ever considered in negotiation research. The superordinate goal of the present research project is to integrate both lines of research and to investigate the interplay of interdependent psychological conflicts on the social (i.e., interpersonal conflict) and the temporal (i.e., intrapersonal conflict) dimension. Building on both lines of research, I propose that the interplay of interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts is particularly difficult to resolve when such conflicts are interdependent: Parties do not only have to coordinate their own interests with their counterpart’s interests, but also have to reconcile their present and future interests simultaneously. Mutually satisfying and sustainable conflict solutions can only be reached when parties consider their conflicting interests on the social and temporal level in a comprehensive way. Based on prior decision-making and negotiation research, I develop a theoretical framework of interdependent conflicts that begins with the premise that parties resolve interdependent conflicts in a prioritized rather than a comprehensive, unbiased way. Referring to the psychological mechanisms of social devaluation, temporal discounting, and perceived autonomy in decision making, I predict that parties will give first priority to the solution of ongoing social conflicts (i.e., present interpersonal conflicts), second priority to the solution of conflicts between present and future interests (i.e., intrapersonal conflicts), and third priority to the solution of future social conflicts (i.e., future interpersonal conflicts). By investigating the interplay of social and temporal conflicts, the present research seeks to understand unexplored barriers to sustainable conflict resolution and to introduce them to social psychology in general and to negotiation research in particular.

In this project, we propose the conflict strength coefficient: a continuous, objective, and practical measure of the incentive structure of multi-issue negotiation tasks. 

We calculated the conflict strength coefficient for 68 of the most influential negotiation tasks. Our analyses show that conflict strength coefficients are more heterogeneously distributed across subfields of the negotiations literature (Figure 5 and Table 1 in the paper) than the binary conceptualization of negotiations as distributive or integrative falsely suggests. Our findings can help scholars exert more experimental control, improve theory building and testing, better match real-world phenomena with structurally equivalent incentive structures, and facilitate research transparency.

Conflict strength provides novel insights into the previously hidden, but central element of the negotiation literature: the objective conflict structure. The objective conflict structure is fundamentally important to understand how negotiators subjectively construe the interactions, how they behave, and which kinds of outcomes they obtain.

For more information on this project please visit our website: www.conflictstrength.com