Mental Models In Negotiation Based On Motivated Information Processing

One of the most important topics in negotiation research is how to reach high joint benefits. Social motivation and epistemic motivation are two vital factors to influence the integrative outcomes. Mental model in negotiation is a critical variable and shared mental models give us a new approach to reveal the underlying mechanism of both-win. Based on the motivated information-processing model and theory of shared mental models, adopting the method of laboratory simulation, this research explored the adaptive transformation of mental models in negotiation.The elements of mental models were found with script analysis in the first research. The results showed that there were three factors: cooperation, competition, and relationship. The components of cooperation consisted of trust, flexibility, both-win, same interest, trade-off; and competition consisted of power, control, win, compromise, split-even, give up. Relationship was summed up to one word—harmony, which was a special factor in the context of Chinese culture.The second research with bilateral buying and selling multiple issues negotiation tested the relations among variables related to shared mental models. The results showed that, shared mental models played a critical role during negotiation, the initial similarity of mental models and the quality of communication process were determinants of shared mental models' similarity, and shared mental models similarities influenced integrative benefits and subjective value of negotiation. Besides, individual judgment accuracy influenced individual benefit, and dyad's judgment accuracy influenced joint benefits.The third research with tower market tasks explored the form and transformation of mental models in dyad-level and individual-level respectively based on motivated information-processing. The results proved that the similarity of initial mental models under the same social motivation was higher than that of the different social motivation; the quality of communication processes and judgment accuracy of high epistemic motivation were higher than that of the low epistemic motivation. The transformation of mental models was analyzed, and the results showed that much more transformation was needed to reach high joint benefits of the different social motivation dyads than that of the same social motivation dyads, while high epistemic motivation played a critical role in the process of transformation. As a whole, in order to reach high joint benefits, the cooperative components should be more focused on than the other factors during negotiation, while the centrality of competitive components should be increased or decreased according to the social motivation of the dyads. In addition, the component of harmony didn't transform significantly in all situations, but it always occupied an important position in the mental models.Finally, a preliminary theory of adaptive transformation of mental models in negotiation based on motivated information processing was proposed after general discussion, which enriched psychological theory of negotiation and provided a new direction for practice.