Unlocking integrative potential: Expressed emotional ambivalence and negotiation outcomes

• Implications of expressed emotional ambivalence in mixed-motive negotiations are examined.
• Expressed ambivalence elicited integrative outcomes in negotiations.
• Expressed ambivalence elicited inferences of submissiveness.
• Inferred submissiveness mediated effect of ambivalence on integrative outcomes.

This paper examines how one negotiator’s expressed emotional ambivalence can foster integrative outcomes. Study 1 demonstrated that observing a negotiation partner’s emotional ambivalence leads negotiators to come up with more integrative agreements. Study 2 examined a proposed mechanism: Expressed ambivalence leads to an increased perceived ability to influence the ambivalent negotiator because it suggests submissiveness. Study 3 demonstrated that perceived submissiveness mediates the effects of observed emotional ambivalence on integrative agreements. Implications of these findings for negotiation and emotions research, and directions for future research, are discussed.