Benefits of Dominance Complementarity in Negotiations Committee: Chip Heath,
Margaret A. Neale (Chair), and Larissa Z. Tiedens.
In my
dissertation I explore how dominance complementarity (the tendency for
people to behave oppositely of an interaction partner in terms of
dominance and submission) affects the utility of behaving dominantly in
negotiations. As dominant behavior is likely to elicit
submissive behavior in cooperative contexts but is unlikely to elicit
submissive behavior in competitive contexts (e.g. Sadler and Woody, 2003),
I hypothesized that behaving dominantly should enhance value claiming in
negotiations framed as cooperative but not in negotiations framed as
competitive. Further, because complementarity introduces hierarchy
into the dyadic relationship and hierarchy may facilitate the social
coordination helpful in discovering sources of joint value, I also
hypothesized that behaving dominantly should increase value creation in
cooperative contexts. So while dominant behaviors have been
previously described as value-claiming moves that are best reserved for
competitive interactions with strangers (Neale & Bazerman, 1991;
Valley, Neale, & Mannix, 1995), I assert that dominance may aid value
creation. Three experiments support this assertion by demonstrating
that behavioral complementarity along the dominance/submissiveness
dimension of interpersonal behavior improves the quality of dyadic
outcomes.
Wiltermuth, S. S. & Heath,
C. (2009). Synchrony and cooperation.
Psychological Science, 20, 1-5.
Abstract: Armies, churches,
organizations, and communities often engage in activities—e.g.,
marching, singing, dancing—that lead group members to move in synchrony
with each another. Anthropologists and sociologists have speculated that
rituals involving synchronous activity may produce positive emotions
that weaken the psychological boundaries between the self and the group.
The current paper explored whether synchronous activity may serve as a
partial solution to the free-rider problem facing groups that need to
motivate their members to contribute toward the collective good. Across
three experiments people acting in synchrony with others cooperated more
in subsequent group-based economic exercises than did those in other
conditions, even in situations requiring personal sacrifice. The results
also showed that positive emotions need not be generated for synchrony
to foster cooperation. In total, the results suggest that acting
in synchrony with others can increase cooperation by strengthening
social attachment among group members.
Wiltermuth, S. S. & Neale,
M. A. Knowing too much: The adverse impact of non-diagnostic information
in negotiations.
Abstract:Two studies showed that
acquiring non-diagnostic information about a counterpart can impair
negotiator effectiveness because such knowledge instills unduly inflated
perceptions of informational advantage, leaving negotiators less likely
to share information relevant to the negotiation task. This reduced
information exchange impaired negotiation performance. We hypothesized
that high power individuals would be comparatively disadvantaged in
their ability to claim value when possessing non-diagnostic information.
This hypothesis was supported in both experiments. By contrast, we
predicted that value creation would be most impaired when the low power
negotiator possessed non-diagnostic information. This hypothesis was
supported in a face-to-face negotiation but was not supported in an
electronically-mediated negotiation.
Wiltermuth, S. S. (2009).
Complementarity and Creativity. To appear in Research on
Managing Groups and Teams: Creativity in Groups, 11.
Abstract:
Dominance
complementarity, which is the tendency for people to respond oppositely
to others along the control dimension of interpersonal behavior, is a
means by which people create and perpetuate informal forms of
interpersonal hierarchy within social relationships (Tiedens, Unzueta, &
Young, 2007). In the present chapter I explore the likely effects of
such complementarity on group creativity. I propose specifically that
expressions of dominance, even those borne not out of formal hierarchy
but rather out of such factors as expertise and enthusiasm for the task,
are likely to elicit submissive responses from fellow group members when
the group is trying to generate creative ideas. As group members
behaving submissively are likely to contribute fewer ideas to group
discussion, I argue that group members who behave dominantly may,
through their influence on other group members, reduce both the number
and diversity of ideas generated within the group. I therefore propose
that dominance complementarity may impair groups’ abilities to generate
creative ideas.
Flynn, F. &
Wiltermuth, S. S. “Who’s with me?” False consensus bias, social
networks, and ethical decision making in organizations. Invited
for resubmission atAcademy
of Management Journal.
Abstract:We propose that people who
hold the minority opinion on matters of ethics overestimate the degree
to which others share their views. In contrast to prior work on the
benefits of social ties, we argue that this false consensus bias is
exacerbated, not mitigated, by having a larger social network. That is,
having more social ties increases a focal individual’s estimates of
agreement with others on ethical issues beyond what is warranted by any
actual increase in agreement. We test this idea with three separate
samples of graduate students, executive students, and employees in an
organization. Our results suggest that people who were better connected
to their peers (particularly those who held the minority view) appeared
to be overconfident that their ethical judgments were in line with the
majority of their colleagues.
Wiltermuth, S.
S., Monin, B. & Chow, R. M. Praise and condemnation: Moral identity
and judgments of moral character. In preparation.
Abstract:Four studies demonstrate
that individuals’ tendencies to moralize positive and negative behaviors
depend on their conceptions of morality, as reflected in Aquino and
Reed’s (2002) moral identity measures. People scoring higher on the
symbolization subscale praised others more for positive behaviors;
people scoring higher on the internalization subscale condemned others
more for negative behaviors (Studies 2-4). As a consequence, how much
individuals praise good deeds seems unrelated to how much they condemn
bad ones. The measures also differentially predicted self-reports of
positive and negative behaviors (Study 1), definitions of moral
character (Study 2), and the language used to describe real-world moral
actors (Study 4).
Wiltermuth, S. S. &
Tiedens, L. Z. Anger and the appeal of evaluating others’ ideas. In
preparation.
Abstract:One of the major tasks in
organizational life is the evaluation of ideas. Frequently, people can
choose when they will turn their attention to the evaluation of ideas.
We examine whether emotion plays a role in determining whether people
choose to evaluate others’ ideas. We suggest specifically that people
who feel angry are more likely than people experiencing other emotions
to choose to evaluate ideas, even though people who feel angry may be
least able to evaluate ideas soundly. In two experiments, participants
induced to feel anger wanted to evaluate others’ ideas in a creative
idea generation task more than did participants induced to feel other
emotions. Experiment 1 revealed that angry participants believed that
evaluating others’ ideas would leave them in a good mood and this belief
mediated the relationship between anger and the appeal of evaluating
others’ ideas. Experiment 2 demonstrated that anger increased the appeal
of evaluating others’ ideas only when the expected quality of those
ideas was low. This suggests that anger may make people more willing to
issue negative evaluations. We therefore conclude that people are more
likely to evaluate others ideas when they are angry because they are
more comfortable judging ideas negatively. Given that many people are
free to decide when they perform the tasks required of them, this
tendency to evaluate when angry may have important implications for when
and how ideas are evaluated.
Heath, C. &
Wiltermuth, S. S. The psychology of popular culture and everyday
ideas: The case of emotion. In
preparation.
