Distributive spirals: negotiation impasses and the moderating role of disputant self-efficacy

Negotiations do not always end in agreements. Yet, we know little about impasses and how they affect negotiators. In three studies, we compare how negotiators experience impasses and agreements, paying particular attention to the moderating role of disputant self-efficacy. Specifically, we propose and find that negotiators who impasse find themselves caught in a distributive spiral-they interpret their performance as unsuccessful, experience negative emotions, and develop negative perceptions of their counterpart and the process. In terms of their future behavioral intentions, they are less willing to work together in the future, plan to share less information, plan to behave less cooperatively, and they lose faith in negotiation as an effective means of managing conflicts. As predicted, negotiators with relatively high levels of self-efficacy were insulated from some of these negative outcomes.