The Effects Of Social Motivation On Asymmetrical Multilateral Negotiations

Social motivation plays an important role in negotiation research. The paper intended to investigate how the negotiators' mixed social motivation affect the process and outcomes of multilateral negotiation under asymmetrical task structure. Majority social motivation, minority social motivation were designed as independent variables and negotiation strategy included integrative and distribute strategy, negotiation outcomes, group climate were designed as dependent variables in these 2×3 laboratory simulation experiments. We used the tower market negotiation games as experimental task. The main conclusions of this study include:(1) Majority social motivation and minority social motivation had significant main effects on negotiation strategy. Prosocial minorities engaged in more integrative and less distributive strategy than egoistic minorities; comparing with egoistic majorities, prosocial majorities engaged in more integrative strategy.(2) Majority social motivation and minority social motivation had two-way interaction effects for negotiation outcomes. Prosocial majorities reached higher negotiation outcomes than egoistic majorities when minority had egoistic rather than prosocial motivation.(3) Minority social motivation had significant effect on the negotiation quality; the effect was not significant of majority social motivation on negotiation quality. Prosocial minorities had less impasses than egoistic minorities.(4) The effect was significant of majority social motivation and minority social motivation on group climate. Prosocial majorities and mixed majorities had a more positive group climate than egoistic majorities; prosocial minorities had a more positive group climate than egoistic minorities. (5) Majority social motivation had significant effect on the problem solving behaviors. Prosocial majorities had more problem solving behaviors than mixed and egoistic majorities.(6) Minority social motivation had significant effect on the decision blocking behaviors. Prosocial minorities had less decision blocking behaviors than egoistic minorities.In conclusion, prosocial motivation had more integrative strategy, more problem solving behaviors, higher negotiation outcomes than egoistic motivation; egoistic motivation had more distributive strategy, lower negotiation outcomes than prosocial motivation. Minority motivation had more effects on negotiation process and outcomes than majority motivation under asymmetrical task structure. These results gave us some suggestions. We should pay attention to inducing the minority prosocial motivation under asymmetrical task structure, because it can promote the negotiation process; at the same time, minorities should try their best to avoid adopting decision blocking behaviors.