Role Effects in Negotiation: The One-Down Phenomenon

Role is a concept that underlies most studies of human behavior in negotiation as subjects take on the roles of buyers and sellers or labor and management contract bargainers, for example Naturalistic studies also focus on such roles as teacher and administrator contract bargainers, hostage takers and hostage negotiators, Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators, and husbands and wives in divorce mediations. This article examines these role effects and finds consistent patterns across both experimental and naturalistic contexts. Specifically, a "one-down effect" emerges when individuals in lower power roles assume more aggressive negotiation strategies that are significantly less effective in achieving desired outcomes. The article concludes by identifying the theoretical frameworks that might explain these role differences.     

GUIDELINES FOR UTILIZING COLLATERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION IN CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

A structure for utilizing third party or collateral sources of information in the child custody evaluation is discussed. Collateral information is vital to the process of trying to assess the credibility and validity of information obtained from the primary parties in a dispute. Information that is from more neutral parties has higher credibility and when the party has access to key information it produces more discriminant validity. When a source with high discriminant validity agrees with information from a primary party, then it enhances the convergent validity on an issue or hypothesis. Child custody cases are inherently characterized by biased data within the adversarial process. Gathering data from collateral sources and using a system to evaluate their usefulness on confirmation of hypotheses is a necessary part of the emerging forensic-clinical-scientific child custody evaluation paradigm.     

Women Law Professors – Negotiating and Transcending Gender Identities at Work

This paper reports a research project on womenlaw professors in the U.K. Despite theirsimilar social and educational backgrounds,successful women legal academics disclosemarked differences in their perceptions of theinfluence of gender on their work identities.Many emphasise the caring and pastoral rolesthey adopt, or are expected to adopt.Organisational cultures also emerge as asignificant factor in determining the genderexperiences of women law professors. The fewwith experience as head of school downplay thesignificance of gender while simultaneouslyacknowledging the influence of genderconstructions and expectations.