Do Representative Negotiators Oversell Their Contribution? On Attributions of Responsibility in Representative Negotiations
Julian Mestwerdt
August 2016
Master Thesis MSc Programme of Psychology Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences University of Amsterdam
Supervised by: H. Aaldering Secondary evaluator: E. van Hooft
Abstract
This study deals with the presentation of responsibility for negotiation outcomes in
representative negotiations. In two experiments, we investigate how representatives present their responsibility towards negotiation outcomes and how constituenc ies approve of such presentation. In experiment 1 (N = 102), representatives were presented with negotiation outcomes and had to report their responsibility to their constituency. Representatives showed a self-serving bias, claiming responsibility for positive outcomes and deflecting responsibility for negative outcomes. In experiment 2 (N = 82), constituency members were presented a similar report from a representative (tailored to the results of experiment 1) and asked how much they approve of the representative and suspect the representative to exaggerate. Overall, constituency members became more suspicious the more responsibility was presented self-servingly. Also, high suspicion resulted in lower approval than modest suspicion. This demonstrates that representatives can present negotiation outcomes in a too favorable light which can reduce their constituencies’ approval.
Do Representative Negotiators Oversell Their Contribution? On Attributions of Responsibility in Representative Negotiations
On June 23 in 2016, the British people voted to leave the European Union (EU) after deciding that their Prime Minister David Cameron did not negotiate the best deal for them to remain within the EU (Cutts, 2016; Wheeler & Hunt, 2016). Leading up to that referendum, much discussion revolved around Cameron’s re-negotiated membership conditions of the UK with the EU, which he presented as the best deal possible (Cutts, 2016). Among other things, the British people had then to decide whether they would trust David Cameron having
represented their interests in the best possible way during these negotiations. This is a current example of how representative negotiators’ performances are under scrutiny by their
constituencies. This is interesting to research, as it furthers our knowledge of how presentations of past performances are constructed and also how attitudes of such
presentations are formed. Our main research question is, can representatives influence their constituencies’ approval of the negotiation by the way they present the outcome? Can they actually present them too well, that is to oversell the outcomes of their negotiation? These questions will be answered in the current research with two experiments.
In these experiments, we show that representatives tend to present their responsibility for negotiation outcomes in a self-serving manner and that constituencies react negatively if such presentations are too self-serving. We investigate representatives’ attributions of responsibility (Brewin & Shapiro, 1984) towards negotiation outcomes and constituencies’ approval of such. In both experiments, we furthermore investigate how individual differences influence representatives’ attributions of responsibility and the constituencies’ approval.
Representative negotiations
Negotiations between groups are often conducted by representatives that are expected to negotiate the best possible outcome for their constituency (Rubin & Sander, 1988; Fassina, 2004). The best outcome refers hereby to the highest gain possible for the constituency in the
negotiation (Fassina, 2004). However, the interests of the representatives and the interests of their constituencies are not necessarily identical (Aaldering, Greer, Van Kleef, & De Dreu, 2013). Representatives can have their own agenda, which implies that they do not necessarily negotiate in a way that benefits their constituency optimally. For example, lawyers that are paid an hourly wage might prolong negotiations, to benefit themselves but not their clients (Rubin & Sander, 1988). Frequent communication with the constituency is thought to motivate the representative to negotiate in line with the interests of the group (Wall, 1975; Rubin & Brown, 2013). That is to motivate the representative to maximize gains for the constituency. For consistency within this text, successful and unsuccessful negotiation
outcomes are defined hereby in line with the interests of the constituency, not necessarily the representative. Successful negotiation outcomes refer here to gains for the constituency, unsuccessful negotiation outcomes refer here to no gains for the constituency.
However, whereas communication between representatives and constituencies before and during negotiations are often studied (Wall, 1975; Rubin & Brown, 2013), research has so far neglected how representatives present the negotiatio n outcomes to their constituencies after a negotiation. This presentation of the outcomes does not affect the negotiation that is already closed, but can potentially influence future negotiations as well as the constituency’s approval of the representative and the negotiation outcome. In our example, David Cameron presented the outcome of a closed negotiation between the British government and the EU. The British people had no direct influence on these negotiations, they could only decide afterwards whether it was the best deal or not. When communicating the negotiated
agreement to the constituency, the representative has a motive to present himself as having acted in line with the interests of this constituency (Ben-Yoav & Pruitt, 1984; Mosterd & Rutte, 2000). To ensure constituencies’ approval of the negotiated agreement, representatives should therefore present the agreement as favorable as possible to their constituency.
personal contribution (Brewin & Shapiro, 1984) to the outcome and how constituencies’ approve of this. We employ two experiments to investigate this. In the first experiment, we test whether representatives’ self-promotion tendency and accountability can predict how representatives communicate their contribution in reaching an agreement to their
constituency. In a second experiment, constituencies’ evaluation of such communication will be examined, in terms of perceived competence, willingness to re-elect the representative and satisfaction with the negotiation outcome. Both studies employ a similar scenario and the results of the first experiment were used for the second, constituencies were presented with communications of representatives’ presenting their contribution as was found in the first experiment. The results of both experiments are expected to shed light on how decisions such as the British exit (Cutts, 2016) are influenced by representatives’ presentations of their negotiations. And it will further the scientific literature on attributions of responsibility (Brewin & Shapiro, 1984; Aerts, 2005) and attitude formation (Cowley, 2006; Ham & Vonk, 2011).
Experiment 1
In this experiment, we investigate whether representatives communicate their contribution by systematically attributing responsibility of successful outcomes and
unsuccessful outcomes to either themselves or to the opposing negotiation party. Applied to the example of the Brexit, the question would be whether David Cameron would claim responsibility for negotiation outcomes in line with British national interests and blames responsibility for negotiation outcomes not in line with British national interests to the EU. In the following paragraphs, we outline that representatives should attribute responsibility for negotiation outcomes in a self-serving manner, and hypothesize that this is influenced by individual differences as well as the situation.
Attribution of responsibility describes whether one attributes outcomes to be primarily resulting from one’s own actions or resulting from external influences (Brewin & Shapiro,
1984; Davis & Davis, 1972). People generally tend to claim responsibility for successes to themselves and blame responsibility for failures to external circumstances, which is known as the self-serving bias (Miller & Ross, 1975; Campbell & Sedikides, 1999). The self-serving bias has been found in a variety of settings, like business (Larwood & Whittaker, 1977), education (McAllister, 1996) and sports (Wann & Schrader, 2000). Following this reasoning, representatives should be more likely to generally attribute successful negotiation outcomes to themselves and likewise attribute unsuccessful negotiation outcomes to the opposing
negotiation party when reporting the outcome to their constituency. We investigate whether such self-serving attributions of responsibility are influenced by social factors, independent from the actual negotiation outcome.
The strength of the self-serving bias depends among other things on social factors, for example whether the individual has to assign responsibility privately or publicly and who is addressed (Arkin, Appelman, & Burger, 1980; Miller & Schlenker, 1985). For example, Miller and Schlenker (1985) looked at individual attributions of responsibility of group members working on a group task. They found that individuals are less likely to attribute their responsibility for outcomes in a self-serving manner while talking to another group member than to non-group members. Presumably, individuals expect other group members to
disapprove of too high statements of individual responsibility for the group’s success, as this effectively takes credit from those group members. The general point here is that social factors affect the strength of the self-serving bias while addressing an audience (Arkin, Appelman, & Burger, 1980; Miller & Schlenker, 1985; Aerts, 2005). For representative negotiations, this should mean that representatives differ in how much they report having contributed towards specific negotiation outcomes, i.e. their self-serving bias in selling the agreement, depending on social factors pertaining to the fact that they address their
constituency. Two social factors will be investigated, one is individual differences in trying to promote oneself to others, and the other is situational differences in accountability.
Individual factor: Self-promotion
To predict how social factors might affect the strength of self-serving attributions of responsibility in representative negotiations specifically, we utilize the impression
management theory. Impression management theory postulates when and how individuals are concerned with the opinion of others about themselves and engage in behaviors to influence these opinions (Gardner & Martinko, 1988; Leary & Kowalski, 1990; Tedeschi, 2013). Individuals engaging in impression management seek to gain social approval by associating themselves with success and avoid social disapproval by disassociating themselves from failure (Tedeschi, 2013). This relates directly to the self-serving bias, attributing success to oneself and failure to external circumstances or entities. Jones and Pittman (1982) developed a taxonomy identifying several distinct strategies of impression management. Among these strategies, self-promotion refers to actively pointing out one’s achievements. Reaching a positive negotiation outcome can be seen as an achievement for the representative, as this is essentially the representative’s purpose. Although self-promotion can be influenced by
situational factors (Giacalone & Rosenfeld, 1986), we focus hereby on a general disposition to engage in self-promotion as a stable, individual difference (Bolino & Turnley, 1999).
Self-promotion does not only entail giving an accurate statement about ones achievements, but also can lead to exaggeration (Feldman, Forrest, & Happ, 2002) while presenting such achievements. More importantly, it correlates with making more self-serving attributions of responsibility (Aerts, 2005). Specifically, Aerts (2005) found that attributions in annual financial reports of companies were influenced as described by self-promotion tendencies. We argue that attributing responsibilities for negotiation outcomes provides a possibility for representatives to promote themselves to their constituency. By claiming responsibility for successful negotiation outcomes to oneself and blaming negative negotiation outcomes to the opposing negotiation party, representatives can try to gain approval by their constituency. Representative negotiators should therefore be more likely to
report self-serving attributions of responsibility when they are high rather than low in general use of self-promotion.
H1: The more representatives generally engage in self-promotion the more do they make self-serving attributions of responsibility.
Situational factor: Accountability
Usually, representatives are accountable to their constituency and require their approval to a) move forward with the negotiation and b) implement the negotiation outcome (Mosterd & Rutte, 2000; Kleef, Steinel, Knippenberg, Hogg & Svensson, 2007). This can affect the representatives’ negotiation behavior and interaction with their constituency. For example, higher accountability is related to more competitiveness of the representative during the negotiation (Roloff & Campion, 1987; O’Connor, 1997; Brodt & Thompson, 2001), which is to exert more effort to reach a negotiation outcome in line with the constituency’s interests. Moreover, it is found that accountable representatives are generally motivated to please their constituency (Mosterd & Rutte, 2000). This is because accountable
representatives benefit from their constituencies approval of the negotiation outcome in a variety of ways. For example, a representative in labor union negotiations might directly benefit from the implementation of the negotiated changes in work conditions if the representative is a part of the workforce. Or they might benefit from the constituencies approval in the future, for example by being re-elected to represent the constituency in other negotiations. If the constituency has the final decision to implement the negotiation outcome, the representative thus has a clear incentive to represent the negotiation outcome in a
favorable light to the constituency.
Thus, when representatives have a stronger incentive to serve their constituencies’ interests, i.e. when they are held accountable, they should be more likely to present the outcomes in a self-serving, hence personally- (and constituency-) favorable manner. In this research, we operationalize accountability as the constituency’s power to implement the
negotiation outcome. Taking the preceding hypothesis into account, this means that individual differences in self-promotion tendency should have a stronger effect on self-serving
attributions of responsibility when the constituency has the final decision of implementing the negotiation outcomes versus when it does not.
H2: The effect of self-promotion on self-serving attributions of responsibility is stronger when the representative’s constituency has the power to decide whether the negotiation will be implemented compared to
when they have no such power.
Taken together, the first experiment investigates how representatives report
attributions of responsibility to their constituency. We predict that differences in self-serving attributions of responsibility depend on both the representatives’ individual self-promotion tendency as well as the constituency’s power to implement the negotiation outcome. For a depiction of the full research model underlying experiment 1, see figure 1.
Method
Participants and design. The participants were 134 (26 men, 76 women, 32
unknown) undergraduate psychology students from the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Of the 134 participants, only 102 filled out the questionnaire completely and were therefore included in the analysis. A power analysis for a linear regression was conducted in G*Power (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) to determine a sufficient sample size using an alpha of 0.05, a power of 0.80, and a small effect size (R2 = 0.06, based on the effect of
self-promotion on attributions of responsibility found by Aerts, 2015). Based on these
assumptions, the desired sample size is 99. The participants were recruited over an online application system and participated in this study as partial course requirement. The majority of 96 participants indicated Dutch as their native language. The participant’s age ranged from 17 to 33 years (M = 20.63, SD = 2.23). Taking our hypotheses into account, we devised an experimental design in which general self-promotion tendency (continuous) and the
constituency’s implementation power (implementation condition and control condition) served as independent between-subject measures. Percentage of attributed responsibility for specific negotiation outcomes served as dependent measure.
Procedure. This experiment was conceived as an online-questionnaire. In the beginning, the participants received general information about the study and the informed consent. Next, the participants were asked to imagine themselves having finished a
negotiation between the student faction and the executive board of the UvA (see appendix A). The scenario was based on real negotiations between the UvA students and the executive board in 2015 (Gray, 2015) and asked the participants to imagine being a representative in this scenario. Throughout the description of the scenario, the constituency’s implementation power was manipulated by stating either that the student faction will vote on implementing the negotiation outcome (implementation condition, mentioned three times during the
description of the scenario) or no mentioning of this (control condition). The participants were presented with ten outcomes that they themselves presumably agreed upon negotiating with the executive board. Five outcomes were presented in line with the interests of the
constituency (e.g., “Having a student representative as member of the university board will be implemented”) and five outcomes were presented not in line with the interests of the
constituency (e.g., “The current use of mostly temporary contracts for staff appointments will not be changed”). Afterwards, the participants were asked to indicate how they would report their responsibility of each individual outcome to their constituency, the student faction (see materials). Subsequently, they were presented with items assessing the implementation power of the students, how relevant the participant saw the hypothetical scenario, prior knowledge of the UvA student protests and the self-promotion scale (see materials). Conclusively, they were presented with an item assessing careless responding, asked to provide demographic information (sex, age & native language) and were debriefed.
Materials. The following measures were used in this experiment. For the whole scenario presented, see appendix A. For all the items of the scales being presented, see appendix B. All text was presented in Dutch.
Attribution of responsibility measure. Participants were asked how they would report
responsibility for each of the ten negotiated outcomes. The participants were asked to report their contribution on each of the presented outcomes (e.g. “How much are you responsible for point 1 of the negotiation outcome?”), assessed on a slider from 0% to 100%. A self-serving attribution score was calculated by taking an average of all ten attributions of responsibility, hereby reverse coding negative negotiation outcomes. These ten outcomes were scored quite consistently (α = .78).
Self-promotion measure. Self-promotion was assessed with four items (from Bolino & Turnley, 1999). Participants were asked to rate to what extent they engage in
self-promotion management strategies (e.g., “Talk proudly about your experience or education”) on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = never to 5 = often). The internal reliability was barely
acceptable (α = .697). Results
Preliminary analyses. The descriptive statistics of the investigated variables can be seen in table 1. Of the 134 participants, only 102 filled out the questionnaire completely and were therefore included in the analysis. Assessing the manipulation check, participants in final implementation condition (M = 4.20, SD = 1.57) were found to rate the constituency’s power to implement the negotiation outcome higher than participants in the control condition (M = 3.75, SD = 1.35). However, an independent t-test indicated this difference not to be significant, t(100) = 1.54, p = .127. This means that there is no evidence to conclude that the manipulation worked and that participants experienced the two conditions differently. The preliminary analyses also showed no effect of age, sex, native language, relevance and prior knowledge on the dependent variable and will therefore not be discussed further. This was
done by assessing Pearson’s correlations between these variables and the dependent variable (see table 1). Originally, it was planned to exclude participants from the analyses according to the item assessing careless responding. However, only 25 participants (24.0%) did answer that item correctly and we therefore ignored it. The data were screened for violations of
assumptions of the statistical tests used in the subsequent main analyses. No violations were found.
Self-serving attributions. First, we investigated whether there is a general tendency of the participants to attribute responsibility of the negotiation outcomes in self-serving manner. Indeed, participants reported higher responsibility for positive negotiation outcomes (M = 66.39, SD = 13.43) than for negative negotiation outcomes (M = 37.42, SD = 17.11), t(101) = 12.67, p < .001. The average attributions of responsibility for each of the ten negotiation outcomes can be seen in figure 2. A self-serving attribution score was calculated for each participant by taking the mean of all ten ratings, hereby reverse coding the five ratings for negative outcomes. This self-serving attribution score was used in the subsequent main analyses.
Hypothesis testing. The first hypothesis (H1) postulates that a higher self-promotion tendency predicts higher self-serving attributions of responsibility. H2 postulates that the effect of self-promotion on self-serving attributions of responsibility is stronger when the representative’s constituency has the power to decide whether the negotiation will be implemented compared to when they have no such power. The two hypotheses were tested using a linear regression model, in which the self-promotion score, a dummy variable indicating the manipulation (0 = control condition, 1 = implementation condition) and an interaction term of these two were regressed on the self-serving attribution score. There was no main effect of self-promotion tendency on self-serving attributions of responsibility, β = 0.08, t(98) = 0.53, p = .596. The manipulation of implementation neither predicted
selfpromotion tendency and the manipulation was also not significant, β = 0.56, t(98) = -1.05, p = .295. Thus, there was no statistical evidence to support H1 and H2.
Discussion
This experiment aimed to show when representative negotiators report negotiation outcomes to their constituency in a self-serving manner. We were indeed able to demonstrate that representatives do generally report negotiation outcomes self-servingly in the sense that they take more responsibility for positive outcomes and less responsibility for negative outcomes. Contrary to our expectations, there was no evidence to conclude that either the representatives’ tendency to self-promote or the constituencies’ power to implement the negotiation outcome affects how self-servingly such reports are.
Aerts (2005) showed that self-promotion affects self-serving attributions of
responsibility. But in this research, the attributions were targeted towards recipients outside of one’s group. This is in contrast to our research in which the attributions were targeted towards group members. Miller and Schlenker (1985) demonstrated already that self-serving
attributions were less strong when a group member was being addressed compared to when a non-group member was being addressed. They explain their results with an ulterior motive; individuals reporting their attribution acknowledge not to take away credit for the group outcome from their group members. Perhaps, representatives only self-promote by
exaggeration towards group members if they see a direct incentive to do so. It might be that this was not the case in our scenario. This and the lack of support for our second hypotheses can be explained by an apparent failure of the manipulation to evoke significant differences in how much power the participants thought the alleged constituency had to implement the outcome. If representatives are not accountable to their constituency, they have a weaker incentive to exaggerate promoting themselves. Indeed, it was found that less accountable representatives are less motivated to please their constituency (Mosterd & Rutte, 2000).
Regardless of these limitations, we now know that representatives generally report negotiation outcomes in a self-serving manner. This demonstrates the self-serving bias (Miller & Ross, 1975; Campbell & Sedikides, 1999) in application to the presentation of outcomes in representative negotiations after a negotiation has been closed. As it is argued that the self-serving bias results of a motivation to impress others (Shepperd, Malone, & Sweeny, 2008), we are interested if that actually is the outcome. In other words, we ask whether
representatives really do influence the impression of their constituencies with self-serving attributions of responsibility. As a next step, we will therefore investigate how constituencies react to different degrees of self-serving attributions of responsibility.
Experiment 2
Ultimately, representatives’ performance is often evaluated by the constituencies’ approval of the representative and their agreements (e.g., in negotiations: Wall, 1975; Mosterd & Rutte, 2000; in politics: Canes‐Wrone & De Marchi, 2002; Grant & Rudolph, 2004). In the example of the Brexit, the British people had to decide whether David Cameron’s
re-negotiated membership conditions were sufficient to remain in the EU. It is thus of critical importance to discover when constituencies approve of the representative. After finding that representatives tend to attribute their responsibility for negotiation outcomes in a self-serving manner, we are interested how constituencies’ approval of the representatives are affected by differences in how self-serving these attributions are. We focus on the constituencies’
approval in form of how competent they perceive the representative to be, how willing they are to re-elect the representative for future negotiations and how satisfied they are with the negotiation outcome. Perceived competence is an indicator on which basis representatives are often selected in the first place (Haccoun & Klimoski, 1975), and it has been established that representatives are often able to be re-elected again in the same position (Bianco, 1994). In the following paragraphs, we develop the idea that the degree of self-serving attributions of
responsibility is only effective in influencing approval up to a certain point. We outline two effects that possibly take place, a direct effect and an indirect effect.
The direct effect is set by the major view in social cognition that statements of others are often taken as true, without taking the situation into account (Gilbert & Malone, 1995). That would mean that a constituency member would take a representative’s claims as face value, without taking into account that the representative might exaggerate his or her own contribution. The more a representative is indeed responsible for positive outcomes and not responsible for negative outcomes, the more did the representative advocate the interests of the constituency. This suggests that the more a representative reports to be responsible for negotiation outcomes in a self-serving manner, the more should the constituency approve of that representative.
Suspicion of self-promotion motives
However, more recent research shows that individuals are able to immediately suspect self-promotion motives in statements of others (Cowley, 2006; Ham & Vonk, 2011). For example, individuals judge advertisement claims as less credible the more these claims were exaggerated (Cowley, 2006). In the particular case of attributions of responsibility in multi-component negotiations, we therefore hypothesize that the suspicion of self-promotion motives depends on the rate of self-serving attributions. That is, the more a representative negotiator claims to be responsible for positive outcomes and blames responsibility of negative outcomes to the other party, the more should constituency member suspect self-promotion motives underlying the report by the representative. This could potentially oppose the direct effect on constituencies’ approval mentioned earlier, which we will integrate in the later hypotheses.
H3: The more self-serving attributions of responsibility reported by a representative there are, the more are constituency member suspicious of a
Influence of self-promotion tendency
Also, we are interested in whether there are individual differences when constituency members get more or less suspicious of self-promotion motives influencing attributions of responsibility reported by a representative. Interestingly, individuals more concerned with impression management themselves, are also more able to detect it in others (Gardner & Martinko, 1988; Jones & Baumeister, 1976). Jones and Baumeister (1976) argue that individuals concerned with impression management are sensitive to contextual cues to alter their behavior. This sensitivity makes it easier for them to detect contextual cues that might trigger others to engage in impression management. In this particular setting, this implies that constituency members who use more self-promotional impression management strategies are more likely to suspect self-serving motives underlying the claims of the representative.
H4: There is an interaction between general self-promotion tendency and the suspicion of self-promotion motives in others. The more constituency members tend to engage in self-promotion, the stronger should be the effect
of the serving attributions of responsibility on the suspicion of self-promotion motives for them.
Perceived competence of the representative
The question now is how the constituencies’ suspicion of a self-promotion motive affects their approval of their representative. One form of approval is how competent the constituency judges the representative to be (Haccoun & Klimoski, 1975). Hereby, we assume that negotiating in line with the interests of the constituency is how constituencies define the competence of representatives. As mentioned earlier, we integrate two opposing effects (a direct effect and an indirect effect) into one relationship. Essentially, we argue that the direct effect is stronger first and the indirect effect is stronger later. The formerly mentioned direct effect would imply that the more a representative makes self-serving attributions of
However, we also hypothesized that more self-serving attributions of responsibility will result in a higher suspicion of a self-promotion motive underlying these attributions as judged by the constituency. The suspicion of promotion motives influencing the self-serving attributions of responsibility then in turn should have a negative effect on the
perceived competence. Indeed, individuals who are suspected to self-promote by exaggerating claims are perceived as less competent by others (Knouse, Giacalone, & Pollard, 1988). This is the hypothesized indirect negative effect. The constituency’s suspicion of self-promotion motives mediating the relationship between the representative’s self-serving attributions of responsibility and the constituency’s approval (here in form of perceived competence).
Taken together, this implies that the effect of self-serving attributions of responsibility on perceived competence of the representative as judged by the constituency is an inverse U-shaped relationship. Initially, the more a representative claims being responsible for
successful outcomes, the more should the constituency judge the representative as competent. But when suspicion of self-promotion motives increases, then increases in self-serving
attributions of responsibility should again decrease the perceived competence as these claims are perceived as exaggeration. Inverse U-shaped relationship refers hereby to a simple increase of perceived competence to a maximum and then a further decrease (a simple criterion, in line with Lind and Mehlum, 2010).
H5: There is an inverse U-shaped relationship between the rate of self-serving attributions of responsibility reported by the representative and
perceived competence as judged by the constituency.
This hypothesis is in line with research in other domains showing that impression management or self-promotion is only effective in impressing others up to a certain degree. Too much of impression management or self-promotion draws attention to the fact that the individual is trying to influence others’ impressions and then in turn actually worsens others’ impressions (Baron, 1986).
Willingness to re-elect the representative
Furthermore, we are interested whether the hypothesized direct and indirect effect of self-serving attributions of responsibility affects other forms of approval next to perceived competence. Research shows that individuals who self-promote by exaggerating claims are not only perceived as less competent by others, but are holistically perceived more negatively in a variety of aspects (Knouse, Giacalone, & Pollard, 1988). One additional form of approval is the constituency’s willingness to re-elect the representative for future outcomes.
Representative negotiators are often elected to represent the constituency (Klimoski & Ash, 1974) and such a representation can also be granted over consecutive terms, as for example with labor union officials (Skarlicki & Latham, 1996)
We hypothesize the same relationship between the rate of self-serving attributions of responsibility and the constituency’s willingness to re-elect the representative for future negotiations, as described before for perceived competence. The same direct effect should hold true, based on the assumption that the more a representative is actually responsible for successes (and less for failures), the more willing should the constituency be to let themselves be represented by the same person in future negotiations again. But it is also shown that identified self-promotion leads to decreased employability ratings for a future work
relationship (Tsai, Chen, & Chiu, 2005). Thus, if the constituencies suspect a self-promotion motive influencing the reported attributions of responsibility, they should be less willing to re-elect the representative for future negotiations. Taken the possible increase of suspicion of self-promotion motives into account, the indirect effect should therefore hold here true as well.
H6: There is an inverse U-shaped relationship between the rate of self-serving attributions of responsibility reported by the representative and willingness to re-elect the representative in later negotiations as judged by
Satisfaction with negotiation outcome
Moreover, the negative effects of self-promotion might not only influence the constituency’s approval of the representative personally, but could also have an effect on seemingly unrelated ratings of the negotiation outcome. Again, we hypothesize the same relationship between the rate of self-serving attributions of responsibility and the
constituency’s satisfaction with the negotiation outcome, as described before. We assume hereby that constituencies are more satisfied with the negotiation outcome, the more they feel they have been represented well by their representative. Because the more constituency members feel they have been represented well, the less could they hope for a better
negotiation outcome with an alternative representative. Hence, they should be more satisfied with the negotiation outcome. The same direct effect as discussed should therefore hold true. The question is whether an increase in the suspicion of self-promotional motives for the indirect effect would then also result in a decrease in satisfaction with the general negotiation outcome. We think so for the same reason that the constituency members could hope for a better negotiation outcome, if they suspect representatives might have exaggerated their responsibility for the negotiation outcomes. Indeed, it was found that self-promotion led also to a decrease of satisfaction with work performance by others (Wayne & Liden, 1995). Thus, we hypothesize the same relationship as before also for the constituency’s satisfaction with the negotiation outcome.
H7: There is an inverse U-shaped relationship between the rate of self-serving attributions of responsibility reported by the representative and satisfaction with the negotiation outcome as judged by the constituency.
Taking our hypotheses together, the second experiment investigates how constituency member evaluate different degrees of self-serving attributions of responsibility made by representatives. We predict that the rate of self-serving attributions of responsibility has a linear relationship on suspicion of a self-promotion motive and an inversed-U relationship on
perceived competence of the representative, the constituency’s willingness to re-elect the representative and satisfaction with the negotiation outcome. For a depiction of the full research model underlying experiment 2, see figure 3.
Method
Participants. The participants were 94 (27 men, 55 women, 12 unknown) students from the UvA. Forty-six undergraduate psychology students were recruited over an online application system and participated in this study as partial course requirement. Thirty-six participants were recruited over Facebook groups and personal approach at the university library and participated in this study voluntarily without compensation of any form. Of the 94 participants, only 82 filled out the questionnaire completely and were therefore included in the analysis. A power analysis for a one-way ANOVA with 3 groups was conducted
in G*Power (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) to determine a sufficient sample size using an alpha of 0.05, a power of 0.80, and a medium effect size (f = 0.25). Based on these assumptions, the desired sample size is 159. The majority of 77 participants indicated Dutch as their native language. The participant’s age ranged from 18 to 29 years (M = 21.44, SD = 2.55). 10 of the participants also participated in the first experiment. Taking our hypotheses into account, we devised a one factor (3 levels) experimental design in which self-serving rate of attributions of responsibility served as independent between-subject measures (low,
medium and high). Suspicion of self-promotion motives, perceived competence, willingness to re-elect and satisfaction served as dependent measure.
Procedure. This experiment was conceived as an online-questionnaire. The same scenario as the first experiment was used. In the beginning of this study, the participants received general information about the study and the informed consent. Next, the participants were presented with the scenario of an alleged negotiation between a student representative and the executive board of the UvA (see appendix C). They were presented with a report from the alleged representative about the negotiation outcomes, stating his responsibility for each
particular outcome as well. Self-serving rate of responsibility attributions was manipulated by altering how much the representative indicated being responsible for each of the positive negotiation outcomes and the negative negotiation outcomes. The manipulation was presented as the representative’s reported ratings on being responsible for each of the negotiation
outcome, which were visualized as sliders (see appendix D). In the alleged scenario, the representative was asked by the student faction to rate his responsibility for each negotiation outcome on a slider from 0% to 100%. These ratings therefore resembled how participants indicated responsibility in experiment 1. Also, the three levels (low, medium and high) of the manipulation were determined by the actual results of experiment 1. The medium level was determined by the mean ratings of responsibility for each item, the low and high level by one SD below and above each mean respectively.
Then, the measures for perceived competence, willingness to re-elect the
representative and satisfaction of the negotiation outcome were presented (see materials). Subsequently, the participants were asked to what degree they suspect a self-promotion motive influencing the attributions of responsibility reported by the representative.
Afterwards, they were presented with items assessing how self-serving they perceived the reported attributions to be, how relevant the participant saw the hypothetical scenario, prior knowledge of the UvA student protests and the self-promotion scale (see materials).
Conclusively, they were presented with an item assessing careless responding, asked to provide demographic information (sex, age & native language) and were debriefed.
Materials. The following measures were used in this experiment. For the whole scenario presented, see appendix C. For all the items of the scales being presented, see appendix E. All text was presented in Dutch.
Perceived competence measure. The constituency’s perceived competence of the
negotiator was assessed on three items (e.g. “The negotiator is competent.”) on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = not at all to 7 = very much). The internal reliability was good (α = .874).
Willingness to re-elect the representative measure. The constituency’s willingness to
re-elect the negotiator was assessed on three items (e.g. “The negotiator is competent.”) on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = not at all to 7 = very much). The internal reliability was good (α = .888).
Satisfaction with negotiation outcome measure. The constituency’s satisfaction with
the general negotiation outcome was assessed on three items (e.g. “The negotiator is
competent.”) on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = not at all to 7 = very much). The internal reliability was acceptable (α = .729).
Suspicion of promotion motive measure. The constituency’s suspicion of a
self-promotion motive underlying the responsibility attributions of the negotiator was assessed on four items (e.g. “The negotiator presented himself in a favorable light”) on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = very unlikely to 7 = very likely). The internal reliability was good (α = .870).
Self-promotion measure. Self-promotion was assessed with the same items as in the
first experiment. The internal reliability was good (α = .860). Results
Preliminary analyses. The descriptive statistics of the investigated variables can be seen in table 2. Of the 94 participants, only 82 filled out the questionnaire completely and were therefore included in the analysis. Assessing the manipulation check with an ANOVA, a significant effect of the conditions on the manipulation check was found, F(2, 79) = 25.90, p > .001. Participants in the low condition indicated that the representative’s attributions were significantly less in his/her favor (M = 3.54, SD = 1.27) than participants in the medium condition (M = 4.48, SD = 0.70), t(38.55) = -3.33, p = .002. Also, participants in the high condition indicated that the representative’s attributions were significantly more in his/her favor (M = 5.45, SD = 0.91) than participants in the medium condition, t(52.20) = -4.47, p < .001. The relevance of the scenario to the participant was found to be correlated with several of the dependent variables, see table 2. The main analyses were controlled for that by
including relevance as a covariate. Besides that, the preliminary analyses showed no effect of age, sex, native language and prior knowledge on the results and will therefore not be
discussed further. This was done by assessing Pearson’s correlations between these variables and the dependent variable (see table 2). Originally, it was planned to exclude participants from the analyses according to the item assessing careless responding. However, only 36 participants (43.9%) did answer that item correctly and we therefore ignored it. The data were screened for violations of assumptions of the statistical tests used in the subsequent main analyses. No violations were found.
Hypothesis testing. The first hypothesis of experiment 2, H3 states that suspicion of self-promotion motives increases with more self-serving attributions of responsibility. An ANOVA showed there was a significant effect of the conditions on suspicion of self-promotion motives, F(2, 76) = 576.16, p > .001, partial η2 = .332. Differences between conditions were tested with planned contrasts. Participants in the low condition were significantly less suspicious of self-promotion motives (M = 3.34, SD = 1.09) than
participants in the medium condition (M = 4.26, SD = 0.72), F(1, 76) = 12.40, p = .001. Also, participants in the medium condition were significantly less suspicious of self-promotion motives than participants in the high condition (M = 4.95, SD = 0.99), F(1, 76) = 6.56, p = .012. Thus, H3 was supported; suspicion of a self-promotion motive increases with increasing self-serving attributions of responsibility.
H4 states that the effect of condition on suspicion interacts with self-promotion. However, suspicion of a self-promotional motive was neither found to be significantly predicted by self-promotion tendency (F(1, 76) = 3.64, p = .060) nor by an interaction
between self-promotion tendency and the manipulation (F(2, 76) = 2.23, p = .114). Thus, the H4 was not supported; constituency members tending to self-promote were not more
The following three hypotheses all predicted an inverted-U relationship between self-serving attributions of responsibility and each of the dependent variables. These inverted-U shaped relationships were tested against a simple criterion (in line with Lind and Mehlum, 2010) of an increase from low scores to a maximum and a further decrease from the
maximum to high scores. First, we used one-way ANOVAs each testing the overall effect of condition on dependent variable. Then we used two contrasts each, one between low and medium condition (expecting an increase), the other one between medium and high condition (expecting a decrease). Significant findings of both contrasts each would satisfy the simple criterion of an inverted-U shaped relationship (Lind and Mehlum, 2010). Due to similar testing, all six contrasts were tested against a Bonferroni adjusted alpha level of .0083 per test (.05/6).
H5 postulates that there is an inverted-U shaped relationship between self-serving attributions of responsibility and perceived competence. An ANOVA indicated that there was a significant effect of the conditions on perceived competence, F(2, 78) = 31.57, p > .001, partial η2 = .152. Differences between conditions were tested with planned contrasts.
Participants in the low condition rated the representative’s competence significantly lower (M = 3.81, SD = 1.05) than participants in the medium condition (M = 4.89, SD = 0.88), F(1, 78) = 13.64, p < .001. However, participants in the high condition did not significantly rate the representative’s competence lower (M = 4.47, SD = 0.99) than participants in the medium condition, F(1, 78) = 1.91, p = .171. Thus, H5 was not supported; there was no evidence for an inverted-U shaped relationship between self-serving attributions of responsibility and perceived competence.
H6 postulates that there is an inverted-U shaped relationship between self-serving attributions of responsibility and willingness to re-elect the representative. An ANOVA indicated that there was a significant effect of the conditions on willingness to re-elect, F(2, 78) = 18.62, p < .001, partial η2 = .109. Differences between conditions were tested with
planned contrasts. Participants in the low condition were significantly less willing to re-elect the representative for future negotiations (M = 3.37, SD = 1.15) than participants in the medium condition (M = 4.40, SD = 1.04), F(1, 78) = 9.55, p = .003. However, participants in the high condition were not significantly less willing to re-elect the representative (M = 3.86, SD = 1.09) than participants in the medium condition, F(1, 78) = 2.65, p = .108. Thus, H6 was not supported; there was no evidence for an inverted-U shaped relationship between self-serving attributions of responsibility and willingness to re-elect the representative.
H7 postulates that there is an inverted-U shaped relationship between self-serving attributions of responsibility and satisfaction with the negotiation outcome. An ANOVA indicated that there was a significant effect of the conditions on satisfaction with the negotiation outcome, F(2, 78) = 39.69, p < .001, partial η2 = .053. Differences between conditions were tested with planned contrasts. However, participants in the low condition were not significantly less satisfied with the general negotiation outcome (M = 3.50, SD = 0.67) than participants in the medium condition (M = 3.89, SD = 0.74), F(1, 78) = 2.45, p = .122. Also, participants in the high condition were not significantly less satisfied (M = 3.95, SD = 0.95) than participants in the medium condition, F(1, 78) = 0.16, p = .694. Thus, H7 was not supported; there was no evidence for an inverted-U shaped relationship between self-serving attributions of responsibility and satisfaction with the negotiation outcome.
Exploratory analysis. Exploring the hypothesized inverted-U shaped relationships further, we regressed suspicion of a self-promotion motive on perceived competence and willingness to re-elect the representative. Suspicion of self-promotion motive significantly predicted perceived competence in a quadratic regression model (F(2, 79) = 9.21, p < .001, R² = .19) better than a linear regression model, R² change = .17, F change (1, 79) = 12.33, p = .001. A least square regression line shows first an increase and a further decrease of perceived competence over increasing suspicion of promotion motive. Likewise, suspicion of a self-promotion motive significantly predicted willingness to re-elect the representative in a
quadratic regression model (F(2, 79) = 5.69, p = .005, R² = .13) better than a linear regression model, R² change = .10, F change (1, 79) = 9.33, p = .003. A least square regression line shows here also first an increase and a further decrease of willingness to re-elect the representative over increasing suspicion of self-promotion motive. Scatterplots with the estimated quadratic regression lines can be found in figure 4 and 5.
Discussion
This experiment aimed to show how constituency members react to differences in representatives’ reported attributions of responsibility for negotiation outcomes. As predicted, constituency members were more suspicious of a self-promotion motive underlying the report of a representative the more responsibility towards negotiation outcomes was reported in a self-serving manner. Furthermore, the results show an inverted-U relationship between
suspicion of a self-promotion motive underlying the report of the representative and perceived competence of the representative. The results also show an inverted-U relationship between suspicion of a self-promotion motive underlying the report of the representative and the willingness to re-elect the representative. These needs to be interpreted in light of the linear relationship between serving attributions of responsibility and suspicion of a self-promotion motive. Constituency members approve more of the representative, i.e. perceive the representative as competent and are willing to re-elect the representative, when the representative seemingly advocated their interests in a negotiation more (by claiming
responsibility for positive outcomes and deflecting responsibility for negative outcomes). But the more the representative reports being responsible for positive outcomes and not
responsible for negative outcomes, the more do constituency member also become suspicious that these claims might be exaggerated. When these claims are too clearly in favor of the representative, the suspicion actually decreases the constituency members’ approval of the representative. Thus, this shows that modest claims of responsibility are approved more than highly self-serving claims of responsibility by individual constituency members.
Surprisingly, there was no inverted-U relationship between self-serving attributions of responsibility on the constituencies’ approval in form of perceived competence, willingness to re-elect the representative and satisfaction with the negotiation outcome directly. Although finding that the constituency on average approves more of a representative, i.e. perceives the representative as more competent and is more willing to re-elect the representative, when the representative presents responsibility in a self-serving manner initially, it did not so
comparing modest claims with highly self-serving claims. Thus, when representatives make more self-serving attributions of responsibility, this does not lead to more approval by constituency members. This can be seen in connection with the results of the inverted-U relationship between suspicion of self-promotion motive and approval for individual
constituency members. Perhaps only certain constituency members become more suspicious of high self-serving attributions of responsibility and hereby approve the representative less, whereas others do not become more suspicious and therefore approve the representative more. Assuming this, the average constituency’s approval of the representative reporting high
attributions of responsibility would stay the same, compared to modest attributions of responsibility. If this would be true, it would be interesting to find out which constituency members are more suspicious of high self-serving responsibility claims and which
constituency members are not. The constituency members’ tendency to self-promote does not seem to explain this, as this does not interact as hypothesized with self-serving attributions of responsibility on suspicion of a self-promotion motive. Contrary to our hypothesis,
constituency members who tend to self-promote themselves were not found to be more suspicious of the representative to self-promote than constituency members who do not tend to do so.
General discussion
The goal of this research is to investigate how representatives report negotiation outcomes after a negotiation has been closed in terms of their responsibility towards specific
negotiation outcomes. Furthermore, constituencies’ reactions towards such forms of presenting the negotiation outcomes were investigated. It is clear that the self-serving bias (Miller & Ross, 1975; Campbell & Sedikides, 1999) applies to the case of representative negotiations and that too high self-serving attributions of responsibility increases
constituencies’ suspicion of such attributions which can decrease their approval of
representatives. Modest self-serving attributions on the other hand seem to be effective in influencing constituencies’ opinion of the representative positively.
The theoretical underpinnings of the self-serving bias are debated in the literature (Miller & Ross, 1975; Anderson & Slusher, 1986; Shepperd, Malone, & Sweeny, 2008), with one side arguing that the self-serving bias is the product of motivation, i.e. represents a strategic choice (Miller & Schlenker, 1985; Shepperd, Malone, & Sweeny, 2008), and the other side arguing that the self-serving bias is a product of automatic processing (Miller & Ross, 1975; Krusemark, Keith Campbell, & Clementz, 2008). This research utilized a motivational approach, by arguing that the self-serving manner in how negotiation outcomes are presented is due to the motivation to appeal to the constituency. Yet, it will not contribute to that debate due to failure to find direct evidence that self-promotion tendency and the constituency’s implementation power affect the self-serving bias. However, it is noteworthy that the self-serving bias in presentation can have a negative effect on recipients’ approval. If the self-serving bias is indeed result of motivational processes to appear competent in the eyes of recipients (Miller & Schlenker, 1985), this research suggests that it is not necessarily
effective in doing so.
In both experiments, there was no effect of self-promotion neither on representatives reporting responsibility nor on constituency members judging them. Shepperd, Malone, and Sweeny (2008) argue that the way in which self-promotion affects the self-serving bias depends on the specific situation, in some cases self-promotion can lead to an increase in the self-serving bias (Aerts, 2005). In other cases self-promotion can lead to a decrease in the
self-serving bias (Miller & Schlenker, 1985). Furthermore, social anxiety could be a potential moderator to control for as it is shown that individuals high in social anxiety construct self-serving attributions differently than individuals low in social anxiety (Shepperd & Arkin, 1990; Shepperd, Malone, & Sweeny, 2008). It is argued that individuals low in social anxiety are more likely to make self-serving attributions than individuals high in social anxiety when they are promoting themselves to others. Perhaps social anxiety may explain why we did not find evidence for our predictions. Investigating individuals that are high in social anxiety and individuals that are low in social anxiety at the same time might average the results out, hence finding that self-promotion affects neither representatives’ own attributions of responsibility nor the suspicion of the constituency of these. In the first experiment, it might be that representatives high in social anxiety made less self-serving attributions than representatives low in social anxiety. And likewise in the second experiment, it might be that constituency members high in social anxiety were less likely to be suspicious of the representative’s claims than constituency members low in social anxiety (if they judge from their own behavior). Limitations and future research
In the first experiment, the manipulation check indicated that the participants in the implementation condition did not thought that the constituency has a final decision to vote on the implementation of the negotiation outcome more than the participants in the control condition. Perhaps the instructions were not explicit enough in regard to this. As an
alternative for replicating this study, the implementation condition could be compared with a no-implementation condition, in which it would be explicitly stated that the constituency had no saying in the final implementation. Possibly, this could make it clearer that the
representative is less accountable in that condition.
In the second experiment, there was low statistical power to find the hypothesized effects in the second experiment. Due to time constraints only 94 students participated in our research, of which 82 were included in the analysis. Originally, it was planned to sample 174
participants according to a prior power analysis. It is possible that a higher sample size would result in statistical significance of the main models tested.
In addition to the specific limitations of each experiment, external validity could be limited. It is debatable whether our findings from these experimental investigations utilizing students as participants are generalizable to the general population of representatives and constituencies as well. Especially for the first experiment, in which the participants were instructed to imagine themselves in a perhaps unfamiliar situation. Experienced
representatives as participants would be an alternative from which results would be more generalizable, albeit also more difficult to sample. On the other hand, the scenario we used was based on real issues at the University of Amsterdam and were quite relevant to the students. Therefore, we argue that they were engaging enough for the results to be generalizable.
Furthermore, the items for careless responding we employed were not successful. Originally, it was planned to screen out participants for low attention that would pick a wrong answer on these items. However, we underestimated the proportion of participants not
answering that item correctly. So we rather ignored these items than reducing the samples for the analyses. One could therefore argue that low attention might influenced the results. The participants in both samples not reading the instructions of these items carefully might also did not read the instructions of the scenarios carefully. However, the items were used rather at the end of the questionnaires. We would argue that the participants’ were less attentive at this time of the questionnaire than during the presentation of the scenario.
Future research should aim to investigate when representative negotiators are more likely to make self-serving attributions of responsibility than when they are not. Such findings would have the most practical relevance. Possibly, a replication of the first experiment
including a measure of social anxiety and improved instructions that manipulate the constituencies’ power to implement the negotiation outcome better might reveal significant
individual differences. Also, a replication of the second experiment with a larger sample size can be called for, due to the low power in this investigation. Furthermore, this investigation is based on the assumption that the representative benefits from the constituency’s approval of the negotiation outcome. It is questionable whether the effects found would also hold in samples were representatives do not depend on the constituency’s approval, which would be the case for external representatives that are not part of the group they represent, like
attorneys (Breaugh & Klimoski, 1977). One could compare attributions of responsibility a sample in which the representatives either depend on the approval of constituency or not, for example by comparing attorneys that are performance-payed rather than hourly-payed (Emons, 2000). Our rationale would suggest that attorneys being performance-payed would present negotiation outcomes more self-servingly than attorneys being hourly-payed. Also, the hypothesized effect of self-promotion might be more likely to be found in this example, as attorneys are not necessarily part of the group they represent. As mentioned before, Aerts (2005) found that self-promotion affected attributions of responsibility in a situation where non-group members were addressed. Such a replication should therefore shed more light on individual differences in the motivation to attribute responsibility in a self-serving manner. Practical implications & conclusion
Although it is inconclusive when representatives report their responsibility negotiation outcomes more or less in a self-serving manner, clearly constituencies approve representatives less when they get too suspicious of the representatives exaggerating. And this seems to be at least partly the outcome of high attributions of responsibility. This research therefore
demonstrates that representatives trying to leave a too good impression, aka that are
overselling themselves, might hereby reduce the approval of their constituency. Politicians for example are known to use generalized and overly self-serving statements during elections (Tetlock, 1981) and our findings suggest that this can actually diminish their chances to get elected. At least in regard to presenting their responsibility for negotiation outcomes. Going
back to our example in the beginning, is there a chance that David Cameron could have convinced the British people to follow his advice and stay in the EU (Cutts, 2016; Wheeler & Hunt, 2016)? Of course, such decisions are multi- facetted and there is no single deciding factor. But our findings at least suggest that his chances would have been highest if he
presented his contribution in regard towards the re-negotiated EU-membership conditions in a more modest light.
This research represents a first application of the self-serving bias on responsibility in representative negotiations as well as the first investigation how representatives sell their negotiated agreements at all. It is demonstrated that representatives present negotiation outcomes in a serving manner, and that constituencies become suspicious of too self-serving presentation which can reduce their approval of the representative in individual cases. Also, there is no reason to conclude that making highly self-serving claims are better than modest claims in influencing constituencies’ approval of the representative. Definitely more research is needed to draw final conclusions on this topic. This should ultimately reveal how the representative negotiators and their constituencies interact after a negotiation has been closed.
