The chief aim of this thesis was to investigate the effect of emotions on negotiation outcomes. Using the social functional account as a framework (Keltner & Haidt, 1999), I investigated the effect of anger, contempt, sadness, embarrassment, and shame on bargaining outcomes. In addition, this thesis has also investigated the effect of status and relevance of emotions. Chapter 2 presents Studies 1 and 2. Study 1 was a lab study investigating the effect of the other person's status (high vs. low) and emotion (contempt, anger or neutral) on negotiation concessions. As expected, participants gave more concessions to angry partners than to contemptuous partners. Unexpectedly, participants also gave more concessions to low status partners than to high status partners. Study 2 extended study 1 with the inclusion of sadness. The results showed no significant effect of emotion or status on concessions. Chapter 3 presents Studies 3 and 4, which used vignettes and were designed to extend and replicate the findings of Studies 1 and 2. Study 3 investigated the effect of emotion (anger, contempt, sadness, and neutral emotion) and partner status (high vs. low) on concessions. Participants gave more concessions to angry partners (as in study 1) but status had no effect on concessions. Study 4 used a different status manipulation (own status vs. other status). The results showed a similar pattern to Studies 1 and 3, in terms of concessions to angry partners. Like Study 3, Study 4 also showed that perceptions of partner's emotion stability mediated the effect of emotion on concessions. Moreover, more concessions were given to high status partners than low status partners, and perceptions of partners' agreeableness mediated this relationship. Chapter 4 presents two Studies 5 and 6, which were online experiments investigating the effects of emotion (embarrassment and shame) and their relevance to the task (task relevant and irrelevant emotion) on behaviour in an ultimatum game. The results showed that emotion and relevance had a significant interactive effect on participants' satisfaction and fairness ratings. Participants accepted more offers in the task irrelevant condition and made larger offers to proposers in the shame condition. Study 6 included a control condition, and changed the emotion manipulation slightly. The results of this study failed to replicate those obtained in Study 5. To summarise the findings of this thesis, Chapter 5 presents the general discussion, implications, contributions, limitations, and future directions for research. Overall, the results found that partner's emotions affect the perceptions of partner's personality and concessions in negotiations.
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