Prenegotiation experience and dyadic conflict resolution in a bargaining situation

Several conditions of prenegotiation experience were compared for their efficacy in facilitating conflict resolution between opposing team representatives. Participants played roles of union or company representatives in a simulation of the collective bargaining process. Prenegotiation experience that involved unstructured discussion, from a unilateral perspective, among teammates, or bilateral study with an opposing representative, irrespective of whether he was to be a bargaining opponent, facilitated resolution. Team consultation that included spelling out strategies and rationale produced resistance to resolution, but bargainers in this condition were no more resistant than those in a control condition consisting of essentially no prenegotiation experience. Other effects of formal strategy preparation before bargaining included more consensus, among teammates, on the ranked importance of the issues, more perceived commitment to the team positions, and a consideration of the debate as more of a "win-lose" competition than the other conditions. Also, the results indicate that the perception of the debate as a "win-lose" contest or as a "problem-solving" collaboration may be an intervening variable, linking prenegotiation experience with negotiation behavior.