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Which are the effects of being dominant or passive in a negotiation? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 5 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Towards Understanding the Effect of Voice on Human-Agent Negotiation”, by Mania, J.; Miedema, F.; Browne, R.; Broekens, J. and Oertel, C. (2020), in which authors wonder how the dominance in the voice affects negotiations. 

With the development of technology, virtual agents and social robots increasingly integrated into society, it is important to know the effects of nonverbal behaviors when we are interacting.

A very interesting area in which to apply this knowledge is negotiation, where social robots are being used more and more frequently.

A negotiation is made up of several elements, ranging from negotiation tactics to the influence of the personality of the one who negotiates. One point that authors consider important to mention, is that negotiation between humans has tended to focus much more on tactics than on this last point.

In recent years, an increasing amount of research has focused on equipping virtual negotiation agents with human-comparable social skills. An example is that they are increasingly capable of adapting their negotiation tactics according to the behavior shown by the human.

Attention has also been paid to endowing the virtual agent with the ability to express social cues such as dominance. Through implementing nonverbal signals from different channels, such as body posture, facial expressions, gaze, head tilt, among others, it was shown that dominance, as a sign of power, can also affect negotiations with virtual agents.

Although many studies focused on this topic emphasize the importance of voice, it has rarely been studied explicitly. In addition, the negotiator’s perception of the other person’s voice, and how this affects the negotiation process, has not been studied either.

The main objective of this study is to explore the effects of vocal dominance on human-to-human negotiation.

Dominance can be defined as communicative behavior used to influence others and to extend one’s power.

It has been shown that hearing people are able to infer attitudes and affective states of the speaker based solely on acoustic characteristics, and to do so, moreover, with an accuracy greater than luck levels. It is known that vocal variability, volume, interruptions, pauses, speech speed, pitch and vocal relaxation are essential aspects to transmit or not vocal mastery.

In interactions between people, the pleasant and warm communication style with a high degree of courtesy is perceived as less dominant. The person exhibiting this behavior will be perceived as generous, and will expect his/her opponent to reward him/her with warmth and a good atmosphere in the negotiation. In addition, these people tend to have a behavior that facilitates opening up to the opponent and increases the probability of reaching agreements. However, him/her is also perceived as less competent and easier to exploit.

Behaviors perceived as dominant achieve greater gains in individual negotiations. A tougher and firmer communication style generally results in better economic outcomes and more beneficial counteroffers.

To examine the influence of verbal expression of dominance, concession tactics, and the moderating effect of negotiation type on negotiation outcomes and perception, an online experiment was conducted.

In it, two types of tactics were used: the individualistic and the neutral. The individualist belongs to the group of competitive negotiation and therefore more dominant; in the neutral tactic small concessions are made and a more collaborative behavior is shown. In addition, vocal dominance and concession tactics were used as factors of interest.

Each participant was asked to play a negotiation game and at the end was asked to explain his/her opinion about the simulation.

The results confirmed, to a small extent, the expectations derived from previous studies on negotiations between humans. Following the findings of Belkin et al., where dominance leads to higher profits, and the findings of Rosenthal, where dominant negotiation agents are more persuasive, manipulated vocal dominance was expected to lead to better negotiation outcomes.

However, this did not happen that way. In the study, the level of dominance was deduced from the voice alone, without additional cues such as facial expressions or gestures. As a consequence, the effects of dominance might have been milder.

Furthermore, although the individualist tactic and the neutral tactic were used, there were no significant differences in how one or the other influenced the usefulness of the agreement.

It is true that participants perceived the individualistic tactic as more unfair than the neutral one. In the first, they perceived that the opponent was destined to achieve only their own goals.

The participants perceived differences with respect to the vocal domain. The group that negotiated with the agent with high vocal dominance finished the negotiation in fewer rounds. When the low vocal dominance agent was interacted with, the subjects felt that there was more to gain and therefore negotiated in more rounds.

In future studies, authors point out that it would be interesting to include additional multimodal cues, such as gaze and facial expressions.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog. 

Did you know that most human communication is nonverbal? The Master in Nonverbal Behavior will help you understand this invisible part of communication and use it to your advantage in both your personal and professional life. Study at your own pace with this 100% online program and earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States, guaranteeing high-quality education. All of this from just $208 USD per month.

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Lying in games: are there physiological reactions that confirm these lies exist? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 5 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Predicting Dishonesty When the Stakes are High: Physiologic Responses During Face-to-Face interactions identifies who Reneges on Promises to Cooperate”, by Zak, P. J.; Barraza, J. A.; Hu, X.; Zahedzadeh, G. and Murraya, J. (2022), in which the authors carry out an experiment where the subjects participate in a financial game, plus, they try to obtain evidence that there are some physiological changes that, according to previous literature, are produced in the body when one lies. 

We already know that communication and face-to-face interactions can influence the decisions we make, due to multiple non-verbal factors and even of a different nature that can activate stereotypes, such as gender, clothing, tattoos, attractiveness…

This is especially important in strategic and negotiation cases, where communication can increase each other’s understanding and strengthen cooperation, improving outcomes for both parties.

In addition, a very important fact is that the interactions prior to making decisions, the innocent or banal talks, also influence the strategic process. It is believed that, for the most part, they can increase cooperation.

Even so, we must take into account, in this era in which telematic meetings replace face-to-face meetings, that this influence of communication occurs much more easily in face-to-face meetings and not so much in remote meetings.

However, the opportunities to communicate also provide the opportunity to deceive and cheat. Deception and manipulation are the key of many strategic interactions, including military operations, negotiations, or even playing poker.

But there’s bad news for liars: concealment and distortion require extra cognitive effort. Deception involves several cognitive processes that are very costly, for example, the use of working memory and response inhibition. Physiological arousal, anxiety during communication, pupil dilation, among others, are signs associated with deception.

In addition, stress levels can be measured because the hormones associated with it increase their presence in the blood, so if lying causes stress, it could be found out when it is happening by observing the level of these hormones in our body.

From an evolutionary perspective, it is believed that creatures that live in groups, such as humans, have had to develop physiological mechanisms to identify individuals that are likely to cooperate with the group or not.

Some of these mechanisms may be consciously recognizable, such as the Duchenne smile. Others are only perceived unconsciously.

Authors’ intentions with this study were to assess the trust between adults who communicate face to face before participating in a game where, in pairs, and if they cooperate, they can win a significant amount of money.

75 subjects participated in the experiment. They had to participate in the so-called “trust game”. In it, software assigned pairs and a role to each of the two people in each pair. Player 1 had to transfer an amount of money to player 2, which would come from his own reserve. What was transferred to player 2 would be multiplied by a certain value. Player 2 would be notified of the amount received and should return to player 1 one quantity that would not be multiplied. If the cooperation between the two of them was good, he could earn up to $500.

Experts point out that the transfer from player 1 to player 2 measures trust, while the transfer from player 2 to player 1 measures trustworthiness.

However, the most interesting thing about this experiment is that the players had a chat for a couple of minutes before participating in the game. They were told that they could discuss a strategy to follow between them, although it was not mandatory.

The results obtained suggested that, although almost all the conversations between the pairs of the game resulted in a cooperative commitment, approximately one third of the players did not keep their promises. The initial hypothesis that researchers had was that high levels of stress hormones would be observed in those who lied. By measuring hormone levels before and after the interaction, it was seen how those who had lied had an increase in this type of hormone in their blood.

Additionally, when players lied, they reported, in post-game self-reports, increased negative emotions, revealing the psychological cost of cheating.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

The analysis of nonverbal behavior is a competitive advantage in any field. If you want to develop this skill, the Master in Nonverbal Behavior is your best option. Study 100% online and earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States, ensuring internationally recognized education. Start your training from just $208 USD per month.

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Emotions

The ultimatum in negotiations: should we show our emotions? Nonverbal Communication Blog

By 5 Mins Read

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper  “Shall I Show My Emotions? The Effects of Facial Expressions in the Ultimatum Game” by Ferracci, S.; Giuliani, F.; Brancucci, A. and Pietroni, D. (2021), in which authors carry out two experiments to know how the expression of some emotions affect the most tense moments in a negotiation. 

In recent years it has been shown that emotions play an essential and central role in the communication of intentions and desires.

Emotions and the information associated with them can be transmitted through facial expressions during specific social interactions, where their inference can influence decision-making processes, such as negotiations.

The ultimatum game has a lot to do with negotiations. It was developed forty years ago as a representation of the reality of negotiations. In this game, a player proposes how to allocate a certain amount of money between himself and another player. This second player can accept the proposal, in which case one will receive the decided amount, or he can reject it, causing neither player to receive any money.

According to classical economics, the respondent has to accept any offer greater than 0, since anything is better than nothing. However, it has been observed that participants tend to reject offers that are approximately below 30% of the total, preferring not to win anything rather than accept an unequal distribution of money. Therefore, in front of classical economic theory, human behavior and its intolerance to inequality appear.

From this idea, the question arises as to how the expression of human emotions influenced the negotiations, a topic that has been studied previously.

In some of these earlier articles, it appears that offers made with a smiling face were accepted more often than those made with a neutral facial expression. Also, there used to be lower acceptance rates if the offers were made by a person with an angry facial expression.

The responder’s behavior, on the other hand, might be more driven by the sense of perceived fairness and fairness that we discussed earlier.

For studies that had the participant assume the role of the proposer, Van Dijk studied the effects of responder joy and anger on the proposer’s offers. He found that the respondent’s anger led the proposer to make better offers.

These studies indicate that proponents must be very careful in capturing the emotional state of the respondent, as they can then use the information obtained to modulate their subsequent responses.

The role of anger is also interesting, with controversial results. For one thing, studies show that when the responder reacts in anger, the proponent makes more concessions. But on the other hand, there are studies that claim the opposite.

Authors decide to explore this and other questions in two experiments. 113 people participated in the first of them. The authors selected images of faces that were manipulated to offer four expressions: happy, neutral, angry and disgusted. The participants, in this case, were the ones who might answer whether or not they accepted the offer.

In the second experiment, all participants were assigned the opposite role, that of proposer. 134 subjects participated and the methodology and procedure were the same.

The results showed that, in experiment one, for the respondent the decision is strongly driven by fairness in supply, as the authors expected.

Emotions also had an effect: neutral emotion and happiness led to higher rates of acceptance compared to anger and disgust.

Some theories have attempted to explain irrational behaviors in equity-related decision-making, such as “inequality aversion”, which confirms individuals’ preferences for fair outcomes.

On the other hand, in experiment two, the participants, in the role of the proponents, modulated their offers based on the expressions they saw on the faces of the responders.

Specifically, anger and disgust had no differential effects and were perceived as equally negative. More generous offers were made to those with neutral expressions, and even more generous ones to those with happy facial expressions.

So what about the anger and previous studies with conflicting ideas? A study carried out by Steinel and colleagues proposes the idea that anger would have one effect or another depending on where it is projected.

When the emotion is directed to the offer, it can be understood as a strategy to know the limits of the opponent and, therefore, can lead to greater concessions.

Conversely, if the emotion is directed at the person, it can lead to negative outcomes, indicating poor cooperation.

Authors point out the need for further research, especially to understand the effects of anger and disgust in depth, and to improve these experiments, for example, with real and higher incentives.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

Did you know that most human communication is nonverbal? The Master in Nonverbal Behavior will help you understand this invisible part of communication and use it to your advantage in both your personal and professional life. Study at your own pace with this 100% online program and earn a degree from Evidentia University, a university licensed in the United States, guaranteeing high-quality education. All of this from just $208 USD per month.

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NonVerbal Communication Blog