Testing the relationship between local cue-response patterns and the global structure of communication behaviour

Area of Science:

• Communication studies
• Behavioral science
• Psychology

Background:

• Negotiation research often assumes organized cue-response sequences structure interactions.
• Understanding these sequences is crucial for analyzing negotiation effectiveness.
• Existing models may not fully capture the local organization of behaviors within sequences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To empirically test the assumption of organized cue-response sequences in negotiation.
• To introduce and validate a new 'proximity' coefficient for measuring behavioral interrelationships.
• To differentiate negotiation dynamics across various incident types.

Main Methods:

• Developed a 'proximity' coefficient to quantify local organization and global interrelationships of behaviors.
• Analyzed interaction sequences from 21 diverse hostage negotiations.
• Applied the coefficient to identify distinct cue-response dynamics.

Main Results:

• Local cue-response dependencies in hostage negotiations align with established communication models.
• Significant differences in cue-response dynamics were observed between criminal, political, and domestic incidents.
• Criminal incidents were further categorized into two distinct interaction types.

Conclusions:

• The proximity coefficient effectively unifies local and global perspectives on negotiation behavior.
• Demonstrated that negotiation dynamics vary significantly based on incident context.
• Opens new research avenues for analyzing and understanding complex negotiation interactions.