Transcending the Classroom: A Practical Guide to Remote Role Plays in Teaching International Negotiation

This article discusses the pedagogical value of using remote role plays in cross‐cultural negotiations between two classes taught simultaneously at different and geographically distant institutions. We argue that remote role‐play simulations provide valuable teaching and learning experiences, and are particularly helpful for managing issues associated with outside‐group negotiation and cultural differences, the prenegotiation stage, electronic negotiations and distorted communication, and one‐shot settings in which the negotiator lacks previous knowledge of the partner. The article begins with a discussion of some critical limitations of “traditional” in‐class role plays, followed by a practical guide to remote role plays and a report of our experiences with them. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of remote role plays as a teaching tool for international negotiation classes and the key lessons for the participating students.     

Sixth Graders’ Conflict Resolution in Role Plays with a Peer,Parent, and Teacher

This study used conflict resolution role play vignettes and self-report surveys of 450 New York City 6th graders to examine associations between adolescents’ conflict resolution efficacy and social skills. Vignettes covered 3 social contexts, conflict with a peer (disagreement over activities), with a parent (raise in allowance), and with a teacher (low grade on report). Effective and ineffective strategies for resolving these conflicts were coded from the videotaped interactions. Adolescents were more often effective in resolving conflict with peers than with parents (χ²(1) = 7.10, p < .01). Strong communication skills cut across interpersonal context as associated with effective resolution. Assertiveness and absence of aggression were associated with effective conflict resolution in vignettes with peers. Assertiveness was also associated with effective conflict resolution in vignettes with parents, however nervousness was unexpectedly found to facilitate conflict resolution in vignettes with parents. Only skills observed within a particular context were associated with effective resolution in that context; self-report skills and cross-context observed skills were not associated with efficacy. Implications for implementation and evaluation of social skills curricula and conflict resolution process are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the Society for Research on Adolescence, New Orleans, LA, April 2002Received Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2004. Research interests include adolescent social competence and youth development programs.Received Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Pennsylvania State University in 1991. Research interests include the psychosocial correlates of puberty, stress reactivity, and health compromising behaviors and adjustment.Received Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2002. Research interests include social competence, prevention research, and women’s health.Received Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2002. Research interests include social competence, prevention research, and women’s health.Received Ph.D. in 1975 from University of Pennsylvania in Human Learning and Development. Research focus centers around designing and evaluating interventions aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of children living in poverty and associated conditions. Conducts research on transitional periods during childhood and adolescence, focusing on school, family and biological transitions in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Specific interests are in the factors that contribute to positive and negative outcomes, and changes inwell-being over these years.Received Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University in 1977. Research interests include tobacco, alcohol, and drug abuse prevention, violence prevention, AIDS risk reduction among adolescents, health promotion and disease prevention, smoking cessation.     

Struggling in the Street and at the Table

Two scholar practitioners of conflict intervention and social movements present case histories of mediated conflicts involving complex choreographies of contention and negotiation. Both processes, while differently structured and facilitated, have led to improvements in the dynamics of identity‐based conflicts in urban communities. The authors raise theoretical questions and propose improvements to practice.     

Ingredients of a Successful Track Two Negotiation

During three days in 2003, an Israeli–Palestinian group met in London to negotiate the draft of the “Geneva Initiative,” which offered a potential final status agreement between Israel and Palestine. In this article, I analyze the video recording of these unofficial negotiations and examine how the framing and conduct of the talks enabled significant progress toward reaching an agreement. I describe six main framing techniques used by the mediators: calling the meetings an “exercise,” which reduced restraints on the participants and enhanced their flexibility, avoiding deep historical issues to focus solely on future‐oriented pragmatic solutions, allowing the participants to discuss any topic they chose while deliberately avoiding crucial narrative issues, convincing the participants that this track two negotiation was crucial for the future of official Israeli–Palestinian relations, accentuating the parties' understandings and agreements with each other, and building a sense of superordinate group identity among the participants, to encourage cooperation. These components were the key “ingredients” for the first — and still the only — (unofficial) detailed proposal for an Israeli–Palestinian peace agreement. They provide lessons that could improve the success of other track two negotiations.     

‘An error is feedback’: the experience of communication error management in crisis negotiations

A range of studies have examined what should be said and done in crisis negotiations. Yet, no study to date has considered what happens when an error is made, how to respond to an error, and what the consequences of errors and responses might be on the negotiation process itself. To develop our understanding of errors, we conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with police crisis negotiators in the Netherlands. Negotiators reported making errors of three types: factual, judgment, or contextual. They also reported making use of four types of response strategy: accept, apologize, attribute, and contradict. Critically, the negotiators did not perceive errors as solely detrimental, but as an opportunity for feedback. They advocated for an error management approach, which focused on what could be learned from another person’s errors when looking back at them. Suggestions for improvement of the communication error management experience in crisis negotiations are discussed.     

Low Power,First Offers,and Reservation Prices: Weak Negotiators are Self-anchored by Their Own Alternatives

Although most scholars recommend making the first offer in negotiations, recent research and practitioners' experience have uncovered a second-mover advantage in certain situations. In the current article, we explore this first- versus second-mover dynamic by investigating the circumstances under which negotiators would make less favorable first offers than they would receive were they to move second, focusing on the effects of negotiation power in the form of alternatives. Additionally, we examine the effects of low power on reservation prices and whether these effects could be mitigated using an anchor-debiasing technique. In Study 1, we manipulated negotiators' power in the form of the best alternative to the negotiated agreement and examined its effect on first offers and reservation prices. Our results showed that low-power negotiators would receive more favorable first offers than they would have made themselves when facing either low- or medium-power counterparts. Also, our results suggest that low-power negotiators had less favorable reservation prices than their medium- and high- power counterparts. In Study 2, we investigated whether this effect would persist in the face of anchor-debiasing techniques. Our results showed that while anchor-debiasing techniques did improve their first offers, low-power negotiators would still benefit from making the counteroffer rather than moving first. Our findings uncover the disadvantageous effects of low power on first-offer magnitude while offering practical advice to negotiators.