Effects Of Emotion On Conflict Management Strategy Selection And Negotiation Behavior

Emotion acted an important role both in conflict and conflict management, while former researches on emotion focused on the valence dimension, ignored the motivation dimension. However conflict often occurs between two persons or more, a person’s strategy selecting and behavior may be affected by it’s own emotion, but also by the other party’s emotion. For this reason, we systematically explored the effects of motivation dimension on conflict management on individual and between individuals. First, at individual level, we explored how one’s own intensity of emotion motivation influenced it’s selection of conflict management strategies and how the emotional intelligence, which can represent well the level of the individual’s emotion management, mediated the relationship between these two variables. Secondly, at interindividual level, we mainly explored how the emotion motivation intensity of the counterpart worked on the individual’s behavior. This dissertation was composed of six chapters:In the first chapter, we reached a conclusion about those researches on the relationship of emotion and conflict management at home and abroad, and introduced the relevant theories and empirical studies. Based on these, we looked for deficiencies and problems, and then put forward our task and hypotheses in the second chapter. In the third chapter, we selected and tested the materials for arising emotion.In the fourth chapter, we explored, at the individual level, the influence of emotion motivation on selecting management strategy and the role of emotional intelligence. We designed total4experiments. The former two experiments were for emotion motivation intensity on conflict management strategy selecting, and the latter two experiments for the mediating effect of emotional intelligence. The results showed:the effect of emotion motivation intensity on management strategy selecting was significant. In detail, compared with subjects with low approaching positive emotion, subjects with high approaching positive emotion preferred to competing; while subjects with low approaching positive emotion preferred to cooperating. By comparison, subjects with high withdrawing negative emotion preferred to avoidance; while subjects with low withdrawing negative emotion preferred to accommodation or compromising. And this effect bore the most significance in the relationship conflict. Experimental evidence supported the emotion motivation model, and proved the intensity of emotion motivation as an important factor affecting the conflict management strategy selection. Further research showed, regarding the mediation of emotional intelligence, the intensity of emotion motivation did not always work on management strategy selecting, especially in the relationship conflict.In the fifth chapter, we studied the impact of emotion motivation intensity on the conflict negotiation at the interindividual level. Two experiments were designed to investigate the effects of different emotion motivation intensity, borne by counterparts, to negotiators’ behavior. The results showed the emotion motivation intensity affected negotiators’ concession. By comparison, when facing a counterpart with high approach-motivated positive emotion, the negotiator made more concession than when facing a counterpart with low approach-motivated positive emotion from the beginning to the end. When facing a counterpart with withdrawal-motivated negative emotion, no matter high or low, the negotiator made more concession than facing a counterpart with neutral emotion at the beginning and during the process, and the difference between the high withdrawal-motivated negative emotion and the low wasn’t significant. Our study further discussed how the difference of emotion motivation intensity borne by counterparts affected the negotiator’s satisfaction and the intention to interact with the counterpart.The last chapter referred to the general discussion. First, we, according to the previous research, we analysised and studied the relationship between emotion motivation dimension and organization conflict management. And then, we, with regarding to the methods, etc, pointed out the shortcomings in this study, and put forward some suggestions for future research.