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NEGATIVE EMOTION
To Thompson negative emotion can lead a negotiator to jeopardise his chances
of success or reaching a win-win settlement. For example, a negotiator who is made to
feel angry or foolish becomes less accurate in judging his opponent's interests and will
thus achieve lower cooperation than when he was low on anger and high on
compassIOn.
Again if the relationship between parties is acrimonious, the negotiators are
more concerned with their own unequal outcome. To Thompson (1998) acrimony
diminishes the feeling for equity. Thompson also warns against the norm ofreciprocity
i.e. the expression ofthe emotional feeling that one experiences from his opponent. The
expression of negative affect leads to an escalation ofconflict, hostility and avoidance
behaviour and inhibition of altruistic, prosocial behaviour. Thompson (1998:180) says
it also impairs decision-making and may lead to a generalisation of jUdgments "to
objectives entirely unrelated to the cause ofemotion."
Anger causes people to make other people blameworthy for and see hostility in
their actions. Fear causes people to stereotype other people and to exaggerate responses
to their actions. People feeling contempt, fear and anger express or display that by
delegitimising, dehumanising, stigmatising and feeling that other people's actions are
more biased than theirs. Misperception of and bias towards others leads to escalation
and intensification of conflict, which, according to Thompson (1998:180), follows the
Gresham law of conflict i.e. "the harmful and dangerous elements drive out those,
which would keep conflict within bounds."
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