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6.1 THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
The results of the current study contribute to negotiation literature by showing how both personal factors, like SVO, and situational factors, such as psychological distance, influence negotiators strategic decision-making. Specifically, the current study shows how hypothetical and informational distance affect negotiators’ value-behavior correspondence.
First, the current paper confirms previous research about the value-behavior correspondence in negotiators (e.g., de Dreu & van Lange, 1995; Olekalns & Smith, 1999).
The findings of this research show that negotiators’ SVOs influence their strategic choices, so that prosocial negotiators adopt more integrative strategies, while proself negotiators adopt more distributive strategies. Although the second experiment did not find an effect of SVO on integrative strategies, it is still accepted that SVO influences negotiators’ strategic choices because this finding is expected to be an anomaly. Therefore, this study substantiates prior research on the role of SVO in the strategic decision-making of negotiators.
Second, the current research shows no evidence that hypothetical distance strengthens the relationship between SVO and negotiation strategies, i.e., the value-behavior correspondence in negotiators. This means that the current paper contradicts previous research from Giacomantonio et al. (2010), because that study shows that a strengthening effect on the value-behavior correspondence of negotiators does exist for temporal distance.
Therefore, future research might want to reevaluate whether the effects of one specific dimension of psychological distance can always be generalized to the other dimensions. For instance, Giacomantonio et al. (2010) already stated that their results did not provide definitive evidence that the effects that they found could be generalized to all other dimensions of psychological distance. They explained that their results did not apply to the dimension of social distance, because social distance induces the adoption of distributive strategies for all types of negotiators (Giacomantonio et al., 2010). The current research provides no evidence that the findings of Giacomantonio et al. (2010) can be generalized to hypothetical distance. Therefore, it demonstrates that, indeed, the effects of one dimension of psychological distance cannot always be generalized to the other dimensions.
Third, the present study shows that informational distance increases the adoption of distributive strategies among all negotiators. Moreover, it demonstrates that informational distance has no positive relation to hypothetical distance. Therefore, the effects of
49 informational distance in negotiations diverge from both hypothetical distance as well as temporal distance. Thereby, the current research contradicts the expectations from previous literature (e.g., Fiedler, 2007; Wakslak et al., 2006). This means that the effects of informational distance in negotiation differ from the expectations of CLT, just as the effects of social distance diverge from the CLT expectations (Giacomantonio et al., 2010). One possible explanation why the effects of information in negotiations diverge from the expectations of CLT might be that not only the amount of information, but also the type of information influences negotiators decision-making (Stuhlmacher & Champagne, 2000). This implies that there is no consistent effect of informational distance because the choices of negotiators also depend on the content of the information. Therefore, future research might want to focus on the effects of different types of information, so that the role of information in negotiations can be clarified.
Conclusively, the current paper shows that the effects of different types of psychological distance on the value-behavior correspondence in negotiators might not always be similar. Therefore, future research might expand on this study by showing how different dimensions of psychological distance influence the value-behavior correspondence of negotiators. Furthermore, it shows that the effects of information also diverge from the expectations of construal level theory. Therefore, future research might want to develop a separate theory that describes the effects of information in negotiations.
6.2 PRACTICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
This research has practical implications for negotiators as well. Particularly, the current study has shown that creating psychological distance toward a negotiated agreement might not always influence the behavior of the opposing negotiators. For instance, the findings show no evidence that hypothetical distance strengthens value-behavior correspondence in negotiators. This means that creating hypothetical distance toward a negotiated agreement is not an effective tactic to influence the strategic choices of the opposing party. Instead, negotiators might use informational distance to influence the opposite negotiators’
strategies. This research provided evidence that informational distance might have an influence on negotiators’ strategic choices. Specifically, it showed that informational distance positively influences the adoption of distributive strategies in negotiators. This means that
50 negotiators can provide more information, i.e., create less informational distance, to opposing negotiators, so that these negotiators adopt fewer distributive strategies. Therefore, negotiators can decrease the distributive tendencies of other negotiators by giving them more access to information. This could increase the integrative potential of the negotiated agreement and thus could be beneficial to both parties (Thompson, 1991).
Furthermore, the results illustrate that negotiators’ SVOs significantly influence their strategic decision-making. Therefore, negotiators can predict the strategic choices of the opposing negotiator based on the SVO of that negotiator. This allows negotiators to anticipate on the strategies of the opposing party, such that more beneficial agreements can be realized. For instance, when negotiators have a proself orientation they will adopt more distributive strategies. This means that it more beneficial for the focal negotiators to adopt distributive strategies as well, so that they do not decrease their own outcome. However, when negotiators have a prosocial orientation, they will adopt more integrative strategies.
This indicates that it is better for the focal negotiators to adopt integrative strategies as well, such that a mutually beneficial agreement can be reached.
6.3 LIMITATIONS & FUTURE RESEARCH
One limitation of the current research is that it investigated the effects of hypothetical distance and informational distance in hypothetical negotiation scenarios. Therefore, this study is limited in its application to actual behavior. As the measurements in the experiments do not relate to actual behavior but only to behavioral intentions, it is difficult to evaluate the value-behavior correspondence relationship. The current experiments only tested how hypothetical and informational distance influence the effects of SVO on the behavioral intentions of negotiators. Although behavioral intentions are the main predictor of actual behavior, there might still be differences between negotiators’ behavioral intentions and their actual behavior. Therefore, future research might want to replicate the experiments of the current paper in a real-world setting, to test whether the same effects hold in real behavioral situations.
Second, the hypothetical nature of the experiments might have manipulated the level of hypothetical distance that negotiators perceived. Specifically, research shows that exposure to psychological distance reduces sensitivity to any further psychological distance
51 (Maglio et al., 2013). Therefore, the hypothetical nature of the experiments might have reduced participants’ sensitivity to the manipulations of hypothetical and informational distance. Therefore, the difference between the control and experimental situation in the experiments might have been smaller than anticipated. This could have altered the experimental results, such that the effects of hypothetical and informational distance appear smaller than they would be in real-world negotiations. This limitation provides another incentive for future research to replicate the current experiments in real-world settings and investigate whether the same effects still hold.
Third, the current research is limited in drawing conclusions whether informational distance is related with the psychological distance construct. In the present study, informational distance is only compared with hypothetical distance and not with other types of psychological distance. Therefore, the current paper can only conclude that informational distance is negatively correlated with hypothetical distance. However, it cannot draw conclusions on the relation between informational distance and other types of psychological distance. Therefore, future research might want to compare informational distance with all other types of psychological distance. This could provide more definitive insights about how informational distance is related to the overall psychological distance construct.
Fourth, the current study is limited in generalizing the results to the overall population.
This research uses sample sizes that are respectable and sufficient for investigating the research questions at hand. However, the effect sizes in the experiment are so small that bigger samples might produce different results about the significance of those effects.
Therefore, future research might want to replicate current research with larger sample sizes, to ensure that the findings of this study are accurate.
Lastly, the current research is limited in time and financial resources available for the study. Therefore, future studies with more time and financial resources might want to replicate the current study to provide deeper analyses on the interrelations between hypothetical and informational distance and how these affect the value-behavior correspondence in negotiators.
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6.4 CONCLUSIONS
The current paper investigated whether hypothetical and informational distance strengthen negotiators’ value-behavior correspondence, just as other dimensions of psychological distance (Giacomantonio et al., 2010). The results of the analyses provide no evidence that either hypothetical or informational distance significantly influences the value-behavior correspondence of negotiators. Therefore, the effects of both hypothetical and informational distance in negotiations differ from the expectations of CLT (e.g., Eyal et al., 2009). Moreover, the effects of hypothetical and informational distance differ from one another. This indicates that the effects of different dimensions of psychological distance might not always be similar to each other. Specifically, it showed that hypothetical distance does not influence negotiators’ strategic choices, while informational distance increases the adoption of distributive negotiation strategies. Therefore, future research might want to reevaluate how each type of psychological distance influences negotiators’ value-behavior correspondence.
Moreover, it might want to explore which other factors rather than distance affect the value-behavior correspondence in negotiators.
Conclusively, the current research demonstrates that the effects of psychological distance on the value-behavior correspondence of negotiators are more complex than expected. The effects of different types of distance might not always be similar to one another. Hypothetical and informational distance do not strengthen the effect of negotiators’
values on their strategic behavior. However, negotiators might use informational closeness to decrease the adoption of distributive strategies. Therefore, it might be beneficial for all parties and our collective society when all parties share more information at the next climate conference.
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