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This study aims to conduct two experiments to provide insight into the impacts of Congressional party loyalty on negotiating flexibility. Constituent support, term limits and bipartisan roles were explored as possible moderators of polarization in American political negotiations.

Experiment 1 used a 2 (party loyalty: loyal/thoughtful) × 2 (constituent support: consistent/mixed districts) experimental design. In experiment 2, party loyalty was constant, and participants were assigned to one of four conditions created by a 2 (term limits: restricted/not restricted) × 2 (role: coordinator/whip) design. In both experiments, flexibility was measured as the percentage of movement on four key budget allocation issues. Participants were recruited using Prolific.

Experiment 1 demonstrated that loyalty produced less flexibility, particularly with regard to one’s own preferred issues. Constituent support did not influence flexibility. The second experiment found that absence of term limits and presence of bipartisan roles resulted in more movement on the other’s preferred issues.

While the authors’ manipulations have experimental validity, further field research is suggested to assess the fidelity of the authors’ simulation and the ecological validity of the experimental findings.

These findings extend the list of situational levers that impact negotiation flexibility. In particular, based on the authors’ findings, embedding bipartisan roles into traditional Congressional processes could help increase negotiating flexibility and cooperation.

Both the experimental task and variables manipulated in these experiments are embedded in a US Congressional context.

This study aims to examine how the fear of appearing incompetent (FAI) and competency pressure relates to negotiation tactics and subjective perceptions in a negotiation.

Using a dyadic buyer/seller negotiation simulation and pre- and post-negotiation questionnaires, we assessed FAI, competency pressure, tactics and subjective perceptions of the negotiation. Mediation models were tested using path analysis adapted from Hayes (2013) PROCESS procedures. MPlus “complex” multi-level function was used to account for non-independence of observations.

Results indicated that those with a higher FAI perceive more competency pressure, which is associated with greater use of competitive tactics (e.g. misrepresenting own interest, holding back information, making unreasonable offers) and lesser use of cooperative tactics (e.g. sharing helpful information, making reasonable offers, compromising). Tactics used in the negotiation mediated the relationship between competency pressure and subjective perception of the negotiation, such that competitive tactics were negatively related, and cooperative tactics were significantly positively related to subjective perception of the negotiation.

Reliability on the cooperative tactics measure was only minimally acceptable and all measures were self-report and collected during a single lab simulation session.

The findings suggest that relieving competency pressure in negotiation settings could open avenues for cooperation. Gaining expertise through formal negotiation training may be one way to accomplish this.

This is the first known study to investigate FAI and competency pressure in a negotiation setting. We draw on an emotion–cognition–behavior framework to show that FAI is associated with competency pressure thoughts, which predict negotiation behaviors. Further, this research lends support to the notion that competitive tactics are fundamental to the mental model of a negotiation.

Applying media synchronicity theory (MST) as a theoretical foundation, this paper aims to examine whether teams using multiple communication modes perform better on a complex intra-team task than those using a single mode.

The authors adopted a mixed-methods explanatory design. Data were collected from 44 teams directly following participation in the Everest Leadership and Team Simulation. Teams were assigned a specific mode of communication: virtual (text-chat only), face-to-face (FTF) or dual (FTF and chat).

No significant differences in team goals achieved were found when comparing dual modes to single modes, counter to predictions based on MST. Qualitative data indicated that FTF communication is dominant and might lead to “medium inertia” when multiple modes are available. FTF teams reported higher perceptions of team effectiveness than text-chat-only teams.

This study was conducted on a small number of teams in an artificial environment; therefore, generalizability is limited. Future research should consider other measures of team performance and test teams in a virtual setting where distance, as well as time, are factors.

FTF communication tends to be dominant to a point where virtual options are ignored, suggesting that greater awareness around communication processes required for complex tasks, and ways to appropriate different media for conveyance or convergence, is key to team performance.

This study highlights the importance of determining processes by which teams shift between media to maximize conveyance and convergence processes. Additionally, distinguishing between objective performance and perceptions of performance highlight an additional challenge for teams that can be explored.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emotion regulatory aspects of venting and use an attribution appraisal framework to investigate the differential impact on anger and emotional tone given a reinforcing or reinterpreting response.

This research uses a 2 (target: offender or third party)×2 (response type: reinterpret or reinforce) between‐subjects factorial design. Dependent variables are measured quantitatively in the form of a questionnaire.

This research supports the notion that venting may be used as an emotion regulatory strategy and highlights the importance of the reciprocal aspect of the venting interaction. In addition, this research underscores the importance of attributions in the venting process, in particular, the attributions used in responding to venting. This research shows that the response types (reinforcing or reinterpreting) as well as the identity of the target (offender or third party) are important determinants of anger and emotional tone.

This research employs an anger recall methodology. Future research should explore venting and responses in a live anger setting.

What is said in response to venting matters. Respondents should be aware of the attributions they use when responding to venting.

Venting may persist as a common practice because we “feel better” after the venting interaction not because we release anger.

This paper presents an attribution appraisal framework for venting anger in conflict and empirically tests moderating and mediating variables previously overlooked in the literature.

This takes the form of a 2 (offender status: high or equal)×3 (target of venting: offender, third‐party, or no venting) between‐subjects factorial design. Qualitative and quantitative methods were employed.

Results showed that attributions were greater when venting was directed at a third‐party than when venting was directed to the offender. Venting to a third‐party when the offender was of equal status yielded the greatest expressed attributions of responsibility and post‐venting anger. Venting to a third‐party resulted in greater anger than not venting, whereas venting to the offender directly did not show a significant difference from not venting. In general, greater post‐venting anger was found for equal status offenders than high status offenders. Attributions of responsibility were found to mediate the relationship between target and post‐venting anger.

Greater participant gender balance and obtaining a pre‐venting anger measure would have improved the generalizabilty and rigor of the study. Future research should investigate responses to venting and additional measures of venting effectiveness.

Venting is just steaming; anger is not reduced through the act of venting. Furthermore, what is said (and thought) during venting matters.

The paper demonstrates that the target of anger expression and the status of the offender are critical factors in venting. Additionally, it highlights the importance of attributions in the venting process.

In order to shed light on whether and how leaders should help manage group members' emotions related to intragroup conflict, the aim of this paper was to investigate the effects of several outcomes associated with two cognitive emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and distraction, in the presence of two distinct types of conflict, relationship or task-oriented.

A 2×3 between subjects' experimental design was employed to investigate the influence of intragroup conflict and emotion regulations strategies on individual-level discrete emotions and group processes and outcomes.

Results suggest that emotion regulation plays an important role in moderating the negative consequences associated with relationships conflict. Specifically, distraction served a critical function to those in the relationship conflict conditions such that both cohesion levels and task performance levels were elevated when group members used distraction as a means of regulating emotions.

This study extends research in the area of emotion regulation into a group context and extends other research that suggests distraction may have potential as a means of regulating emotion. Long-term groups with experience in problem solving may have behaved in different ways than participants in this study.

Emotion regulation strategies have been studied only in an individual context. This study is particularly valuable in understanding how emotion regulation strategies work differentially when applied to multiple individuals in a shared setting. Additionally, it incorporates the use of distraction as a viable regulation strategy.