Embracing Complexity: A Review of Negotiation Research.

In this review, we identify emerging trends in negotiation scholarship that embrace complexity, finding moderators of effects that were initially described as monolithic, examining the nuances of social interaction, and studying negotiation as it occurs in the real world. We also identify areas in which research is lacking and call for scholarship that offers practical advice. All told, the existing research highlights negotiation as an exciting context for examining human behavior, characterized by features such as strong emotions, an intriguing blend of cooperation and competition, the presence of fundamental issues such as power and group identity, and outcomes that deeply affect the trajectory of people's personal and professional lives.

The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?

Having conversations with new people is an important and rewarding part of social life. Yet conversations can also be intimidating and anxiety provoking, and this makes people wonder and worry about what their conversation partners really think of them. Are people accurate in their estimates? We found that following interactions, people systematically underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company, an illusion we call the liking gap. We observed the liking gap as strangers got acquainted in the laboratory, as first-year college students got to know their dorm mates, and as formerly unacquainted members of the general public got to know each other during a personal development workshop. The liking gap persisted in conversations of varying lengths and even lasted for several months, as college dorm mates developed new relationships. Our studies suggest that after people have conversations, they are liked more than they know.

Shared experiences are amplified.

In two studies, we found that sharing an experience with another person, without communicating, amplifies one's experience. Both pleasant and unpleasant experiences were more intense when shared. In Study 1, participants tasted pleasant chocolate. They judged the chocolate to be more likeable and flavorful when they tasted it at the same time that another person did than when that other person was present but engaged in a different activity. Although these results were consistent with our hypothesis that shared experiences are amplified compared with unshared experiences, it could also be the case that shared experiences are more enjoyable in general. We designed Study 2 to distinguish between these two explanations. In this study, participants tasted unpleasantly bitter chocolate and judged it to be less likeable when they tasted it simultaneously with another person than when that other person was present but doing something else. These results support the amplification hypothesis.

Theory of collective mind.

Theory of mind research has traditionally focused on the ascription of mental states to a single individual. Here, we introduce a theory of collective mind: the ascription of a unified mental state to a group of agents with convergent experiences. Rather than differentiation between one's personal perspective and that of another agent, a theory of collective mind requires perspectival unification across agents. We review recent scholarship across the cognitive sciences concerning the conceptual foundations of collective mind representations and their empirical induction through the synchronous arrival of shared information. Research suggests that representations of a collective mind cause psychological amplification of co-attended stimuli, create relational bonds, and increase cooperation, among co-attendees.

The thought gap after conversation: Underestimating the frequency of others' thoughts about us.

After conversations, people continue to think about their conversation partners. They remember their stories, revisit their advice, and replay their criticisms. But do people realize that their conversation partners are doing the same? In eight studies, we explored the possibility that people would systematically underestimate how much their conversation partners think about them following interactions. We found evidence for this thought gap in a variety of contexts, including field conversations in a dining hall (Study 1), "getting acquainted" conversations in the lab (Study 2), intimate conversations among friends (Study 3), and arguments between romantic partners (Study 4). Several additional studies investigated a possible explanation for the thought gap: the asymmetric availability of one's own thoughts compared with others' thoughts. Accordingly, the thought gap increased when conversations became more salient (Study 4) and as people's thoughts had more time to accumulate after a conversation (Study 6); conversely, the thought gap decreased when people were prompted to reflect on their conversation partners' thoughts (Study 5). Consistent with our proposed mechanism, we also found that the thought gap was moderated by trait rumination, or the extent to which people's thoughts come easily and repetitively to mind (Study 7). In a final study, we explored the consequences of the thought gap by comparing the effects of thought frequency to thought valence on the likelihood of reconciliation after an argument (Study 8). Collectively, these studies demonstrate that people remain on their conversation partners' minds more than they know. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Why a Simple Act of Kindness Is Not as Simple as It Seems: Underestimating the Positive Impact of Our Compliments on Others.

A simple compliment can make someone's day, start a new friendship, or just make the world a better, kinder place. So, why don't people give more compliments? Perhaps people misforecast the effect their compliment will have. Five studies explored this possibility. In Studies 1a and 1b, compliment givers underestimated how positively the person receiving their compliment would feel, with consequences for their likelihood of giving a compliment. Compliment givers also overestimated how bothered and uncomfortable the recipient would feel (Study 2)-and did so even in hindsight (Study 3). Compliment givers' own anxiety and concern about their competence led to their misprediction, whereas third-party forecasters were accurate (Study 4). Finally, despite compliment givers' anxiety at the prospect of giving compliments across our studies, they felt better after having done so (Study 4). Our studies suggest that people misestimate their compliments' value to others, and so they refrain from engaging in this prosocial behavior.

Merged minds: Generalized shared reality in dyadic relationships.

Many everyday conversations, whether between close partners or strangers interacting for the first time, are about the world external to their relationship, such as music, food, or current events. Yet, the focus of most research on interpersonal relationships to date has been on the ways in which partners perceive each other and their relationship. We propose that one critical aspect of interpersonal interactions is developing a sense of dyadic, generalized shared reality-the subjective experience of sharing a set of inner states (e.g., thoughts, feelings, or beliefs) in common with a particular interaction partner about the world in general, including the world external to the relationship. Across 9 studies, we use mixed methods to investigate the unique role of generalized shared reality in interpersonal interactions, both between close partners and strangers. We hypothesize that generalized shared reality predicts how people connect with each other and perceive the world around them. We also investigate the observable, dyadic behavioral signatures of generalized shared reality in interpersonal interactions. Finally, we examine the motivation to uphold an existing sense of generalized shared reality. We hypothesize that couples high on baseline generalized shared reality exhibit motivated, dyadic interaction behaviors to reaffirm their generalized shared reality in the face of experimentally manipulated threat. By identifying a unique dimension of everyday interactions, these studies aim to capture a critical aspect of the lived subjective experience of human relationships that has not been captured before. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The invisibility cloak illusion: People (incorrectly) believe they observe others more than others observe them.

Whether at a coffee shop, in a waiting room, or riding the bus, people frequently observe the other people around them. Yet they often fail to realize how much other people engage in the same behavior, and that they, therefore, also are being observed. Because it is logically impossible that people, on average, are the subjects of observation more than they are objects of it, the belief that one watches others more than one is watched is an illusion. Several studies show that people incorrectly believe that they observe others more than other people observe them. We call this mistaken belief the "invisibility cloak illusion." People believe that they observe others more than do other people and that they are generally observed less than are others (Studies 1-3, 5, 6). The illusion persists both among strangers in the same vicinity (Study 2) and among friends interacting with one another (Study 3), and it cannot be explained away as yet another general better-than-average bias nor is it the result of believing one has more thoughts, in general, than do other people (Studies 2-3). The illusion is supported by a failure to catch others watching oneself (Studies 1b, 4) and it is manifest in the specific contents of people's thoughts about one another (Studies 5 and 6). Finally, rendering a feature of one's appearance salient to oneself fails to interrupt the illusion despite increasing one's belief that others are paying more attention specifically to that salient feature (Study 6). (PsycINFO Database Record

Communal relational context (or lack thereof) shapes emotional lives.

A case is made that a communal relationship context (or lack thereof) shapes people's emotional lives for three reasons. First, a person's communal partners assume some degree of non-contingent responsibility for the person's welfare. This allows the person, when with or, at times, when thinking about such partners, to drop some self-protective vigilance, appraise situations as less threatening, focus attention outward on to situations and to see those situations through the partner's eyes often enhancing the emotional impact of those situations, express emotions which convey individual vulnerabilities and, in turn, receive and accept emotion regulation from partners. Second, a person is responsive to his or her communal partners' welfare. This leads a person, when with or, at times, when thinking about such partners to attend to partners' welfare and attendant emotions, mimic them, empathize with them and help to regulate them. This may also enhance how threatening situations seem when they might threaten the partner for whom the person feels communal responsibility. Third, communal relationships are valued by people. As a result certain emotions, which we call relational emotions, including embarrassment, hurt, guilt and gratitude commonly arise in the context of communal relationships as signals of the welfare of the relationship per se. In well-functioning communal relationships these emotions elicit partner responses that help to form, build, maintain and repair the relationships. It is more generally noted that other aspects of relational context (e.g. power differentials) also shape emotional lives and that emotion researchers are well-advised to attend to how all aspects relational context may influence emotional lives.

Psychological Distance Moderates the Amplification of Shared Experience.

Sharing an experience with another person can amplify that experience. Here, we propose for the first time that amplification is moderated by the psychological distance between co-experiencers. We predicted that experiences would be amplified for co-experiencers who are psychologically proximate but not for co-experiencers who are psychologically distant. In two studies we manipulated both (a) whether or not a pleasant experience was shared and (b) the psychological distance between co-experiencers, via social distance (Study 1) and spatial distance (Study 2). In Study 1, co-experiencers either were unacquainted (i.e., strangers, socially distant) or became acquainted in the laboratory (i.e., socially proximate). In Study 2, co-experiencers were either in different rooms (i.e., spatially distant) or in the same room (i.e., spatially proximate). In both studies, the pleasant experience was amplified when shared compared with when not shared, but only when co-experiencers were psychologically proximate (vs. distant) to one another.

Automaticity in social-cognitive processes.

Over the past several years, the concept of automaticity of higher cognitive processes has permeated nearly all domains of psychological research. In this review, we highlight insights arising from studies in decision-making, moral judgments, close relationships, emotional processes, face perception and social judgment, motivation and goal pursuit, conformity and behavioral contagion, embodied cognition, and the emergence of higher-level automatic processes in early childhood. Taken together, recent work in these domains demonstrates that automaticity does not result exclusively from a process of skill acquisition (in which a process always begins as a conscious and deliberate one, becoming capable of automatic operation only with frequent use) - there are evolved substrates and early childhood learning mechanisms involved as well.