Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

Improving the Negotiating Relationship
During a negotiation, negative emotions can get in the way of easy two-way
communication. Negative emotions are often products of an adversarial relational
structure between parties. In recent years, researchers have made significant strides
in understanding the structure of negotiating relationships and how to shape those
relationships to enable Pareto-optimal outcomes. As a result, negotiators have
new tools to elicit emotions that can serve their negotiating purpose.
One major advance has been to link the concepts of identity and relationship.
In any negotiating relationship, people care about their perceived identity vis-àvis
their negotiating counterpart (i.e., “what I think others think about me”). In this
sense, a negotiator’s identity is largely relational (Shapiro, 2002): people interact
differently with different people. In a relationship with an aggressive person a
negotiator may feel tense and resentful, and thus act in certain ways to spite the
other person. In a relationship with a soft-spoken person, that same negotiator may
feel emotions of connection and act in ways that support the relationship. This
insight — that the structure of the interaction shapes each negotiator’s identity
— has important practical consequences.
One’s Relational Identity Can Constrain or Facilitate a Good Outcome
One’s negotiating purpose is not always served by one’s “relational identity”
(Shapiro, 2002). Nor is one’s negotiating purpose always served by the resulting
emotional, cognitive, and behavioral consequences for each party. A negotiator
may fail to speak up when it would be wise to do so, or may act more cautiously
than suits his or her interests.
By understanding the dimensions that comprise relational identity, negotiators
can better calibrate behavior to best serve their negotiating purpose. One’s
“relational identity” consists of two main dimensions: autonomy and affiliation
(see Shapiro 2002 for a review of research on these dimensions). Autonomy is
the freedom to make a decision without that decision’s being imposed (Averill
and Nunley, 1992; Fisher and Shapiro, 2005). Research suggests that constrained
autonomy leads to resistance, negative emotions, and a lack of cooperation
(Brehm, 1966; Fisher and Shapiro, 2005). One explanation for why sources
resist disclosing information is that they feel that demands to reveal information
impinge upon their autonomy. Affi liation is a sense of personal connection, the
opposite of rejection. A party who feels rejected is likely to resist cooperation.
The feeling of rejection, in fact, stimulates the same part of the brain as physical
pain (Eisenberger, N., Lieberman, M., and Williams, K., 2003), which helps to
explain why trivial acts of exclusion often elicit strong emotional responses from
the excluded party. Conversely, a positive affiliation tends to stimulate positive
emotions and mutual cooperation.
Capitalizing on People’s Emotional Reactions
Research suggests that positive emotions have particular utility in a
negotiation (See Fisher and Shapiro, 2005). They improve the likelihood of a
Pareto-optimal agreement; they expand people’s ability to trust and to think
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