8. reactive devaluation in negotiation and conflict resolution

C H A P T E R T W O
Reactive Devaluation in
Negotiation and
Conflict Resolution
Lee Ross

Adversaries seeking to settle conflict through negotiation face the
familiar problem of achieving “gains in trade.” The parties stand
ready to make concessions, such as forfeiting valued resources or opportuni-ties,
provided that they can receive concessions that they value even more.
Thus, by exploiting differences in needs, values, or preferences it generally
should be possible for the adversaries themselves (or third parties interced-ing
on their behalf) to propose a trade of concessions offering both sides an
improvement over the status quo. (See Homans 1961; Pruitt 1981; Raiffa
1982). Only when the contending parties have already achieved all potential
gains of trade, and one party can improve its position only at the expense of
the other—i.e., only when the status quo already represents a Pareto-efficient
state—should a conflict logically become “intractable.” Otherwise, the fail-ure
of the parties to negotiate mutually acceptable terms reflects a kind of
market inefficiency—in much the same sense as there is an inefficiency
when a motivated buyer and a motivated seller are unable to consummate a
deal under conditions where the buyer privately is willing to pay a greater
amount for the relevant goods or services than the seller privately is willing
to accept.
Sometimes, of course, the interests of parties involved in conflict are so
dramatically opposed—or at least appear to be in the eyes of the dispu-tants—
that the difficulty of achieving success in negotiation seems not only
explicable but inevitable. Israel and Syria both may have long recognized
the perils of their continuing deadlock; and Syria fervently wished to regain
the Golan Heights from Israel, while Israel was equally fervent in its desire
for a Syrian pledge of nonaggression. But no conflict-reducing trade of con-cessions
was likely to be negotiated as long as Israel valued the Heights more
than the pledge and Syria deemed the pledge too high a price for the
Heights. Enmity and distrust may even reach the point where the specifics
2 7

of the concessions sought or proposed cease to matter. The disputants may
view their struggle as a “zero-sum” game, one in which any gain achieved
by the other side is perceived to be a loss, of equal magnitude, to their own
side—so that the very idea of a mutually advantageous trade of concessions
becomes a psychological, if not a logical, impossibility (see Pruitt and Rubin
1986). But many if not most disputes are at least somewhat tractable; and
gains of trade through mutual concession making seem readily achievable
provided that the parties are willing to bargain in good faith and patiently
explore possibilities for mutual advantage.
One need only pick up the morning newspaper, however, to see that
negotiations frequently fail and deadlocks persist even in conflicts where
preservation of the status quo clearly seems to be against the best interest of
the relevant parties. To some extent, the problem can be traced to barriers—
strategic, psychological, or situational—that make it difficult to formulate,
and/or get on the table, a proposal that both parties, given their different
interests and views and their conflicting strategic goals, deem preferable, at
least temporarily, to perpetuation of the status quo. (See Chapter 1.) But
even when such a “mutually-acceptable-in-principle” proposal can be formu-lated,
there may be an additional barrier to be overcome, one that arises, at
least in large part, from the dynamics of the negotiation process. This barrier
has been termed reactive devaluation (Ross and Stillinger 1991; Ross and
Ward 1995; Stillinger, Epelbaum, Keltner, and Ross 1990). It refers to the
fact that the very offer of a particular proposal or concession—especially if
the offer comes from an adversary —may diminish its apparent value or attrac-tiveness
in the eyes of the recipient.
The same newspaper articles that describe failed negotiations and pro-longed
deadlocks generally provide anecdotal evidence of the parties’ nega-tive
characterizations of each others proposals. It is easy to dismiss such
uncharitable responses as tactical posturing rather than authentic reflections
of the parties’ private perceptions and evaluations. Labor has obvious incen-tives
to denigrate the wage concessions that management proposes at the
outset of contract negotiations. Parties in legal or political disputes similarly
have ample reason to characterize the other side’s current offer as ungener-ous
and inadequate. In so doing the negotiators simultaneously demonstrate
their toughness to their constituencies, make a bid for the sympathy of inter-ested
third parties, and perhaps even convince the other side to up the ante.
However, in such cases the question remains whether devaluation occurs in
the proposal recipients' private evaluations—or at least in the evaluations
they express when they have no strategic motives for misrepresenting their
actual sentiments.
Ideally, one would like to answer such a question by gaining access to the
candid evaluations, or rather to the changes in evaluation, that occur in the
context of a broad sample of face-to-face negotiations. But the researcher
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rarely enjoys such access—certainly not under circumstances where suitable
experimental control and measurement are possible and where sample sizes
are adequate for purposes of statistical inference. However, a variety of sur-vey
and experimental techniques have been employed to furnish evidence
of genuine, as opposed to strategically feigned, devaluation. That is, in the
research to be described, recipients seem inclined to devalue concessionary
proposals even when they know that their ratings will never come to the
attention of the party offering the proposal, or for that matter to the attention
of anyone they might have reasons to deceive about their actual feelings
and assessments.
SUMMARY OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Initial evidence for the reactive devaluation barrier was provided in a 1986
sidewalk survey of opinions regarding possible arms reductions by the U.S.
and the U.S.S.R. (Stillinger et al. 1991). Respondents were asked to evalu-ate
the terms of a simple but sweeping nuclear disarmament proposal—one
calling for an immediate 50 percent reduction of long-range strategic weap-ons,
to be followed over the next decade and a half by further reduction in
both strategic and short-range tactical weapons until, very early in the next
century, all such weapons would have disappeared from the two nations’
arsenals. As a matter of history, this proposal had actually been made slightly
earlier, with little fanfare or impact, by the Soviet leader Gorbachev. In the
Stillinger et al. survey, however, the proposal’s putative source was manipu-lated—
that is, depending on experimental condition, it was ascribed by the
survey instrument either to the Soviet leader, to President Reagan, or to a
group of unknown strategy analysts—and only the responses of subjects who
claimed to be hearing of the proposal for the first time were included in
subsequent analyses.
The results of this survey showed, as predicted, that the proposal’s puta-tive
authorship determined its attractiveness. When the proposal was attrib-uted
to the U.S. leader, 90 percent of respondents thought it either favorable
to the U.S. or evenhanded; and when it was attributed to the (presumably
neutral) third party, 80 percent thought it either favorable to the U.S. or
evenhanded; but when the same proposal was attributed to the Soviet
leader, only 44 percent of respondents expressed a similarly positive
reaction.
While such results, and related ones reported a generation ago by Stuart
Oskamp (1965), are unlikely to violate the reader’s intuitions and experi-ence,
there is a point about research methodology or strategy that is worth
emphasizing. It would be relatively easy for any competent experimenter to
illustrate that the perceived valence of a proposal can be influenced by the
R E A C T I V E D E V A L U A T I O N I N C O N F L I C T R E S O L U T I O N • 2 9

perceived valence of its source. All the experimenter would have to do is
frame a fictional proposal and contrive a negotiation context that featured
lots of ambiguity or uncertainty—for example, ambiguity about what the
parties would do and receive, or about the conditions under which they
could exercise an “escape clause,” or about the consequences they would
face for not living up to the proposal’s terms. But it should be noted that in
the case of the proposal offered by Gorbachev, the framer’s interest presum-ably
lay not in producing such reactive devaluation but in preventing it (to
which end, presumably, he was obliged to formulate terms that either would
be clear and forthcoming or else ambiguous in ways specifically designed to
win a positive rather than a negative reaction from the intended audience).
Accordingly, the Stillinger et al. demonstration cannot be dismissed as a
hothouse product of the psychological laboratory, one irrelevant to the real
world. Nor could the cool reception that Stillinger et al.'s subjects afforded
the Gorbachev proposal relative to the Reagan or third-party proposal be
attributed to some strategic goal. For, unlike players on the real-world diplo-matic
stage, these subjects obviously were not trying to coax further conces-sions
from the other side or to win the hearts and minds of partisan
constituents or third parties.
Although this initial reactive devaluation study provided positive results,
the findings are unlikely to seem particularly surprising or provocative to
negotiation theorists or practitioners. The reason for this is clear. While the
tendency to devalue the adversary’s concessions and proposals undeniably is
a barrier to dispute resolution, such a tendency can readily be defended on
normative grounds. Certainly there is nothing counternormative about treat-ing
a proposal’s authorship as informative with respect to the balance of
advantages and disadvantages that would accrue to its author. (“They
wouldn’t have offered those terms if those terms didn’t advance their inter-ests.“)
And, where the author in question is presumed to be a foe who seeks
to dominate the proposal’s recipients, there may be nothing counternorma-tive
about also treating such authorship as potentially informative about the
proposal’s prospects for the recipient. ("They wouldn't have offered those
terms if those terms strengthened our position relative to theirs.")
It was such normative considerations, at least in part, that dictated the
design and procedural details of the next set of reactive devaluation studies
conducted by Stillinger et al. In these studies the responses contrasted were
not ones made to proposals from hostile versus nonhostile sources. In fact,
the responses examined were made in reaction to compromise measures
offered by a source who was perceived by most recipients as not opposed to
their own interests, but merely acting in that source’s interests. The context
of this research was a campus-wide controversy at Stanford about the univer-sity’s
investment policy. Students generally favored a policy calling for total
and immediate divestment by the university of all stock holdings in compa-
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nies doing business in South Africa. The university, claiming to share the
students’ opposition to apartheid, but to be constrained by its responsibilit-ies
to maximize the value of its portfolio and earnings, set up a committee
to study the problem and devise a divestment policy that would be both
financially prudent and socially responsible. Once again using a real-world
issue, and once again relying upon the use of an experimental manipulation
within the context of a survey, Stillinger et al. seized this opportunity to
study further the phenomenon of reactive devaluation.
In the first such study, students simply were asked to read a booklet
describing the divestment controversy, then to evaluate two potential com-promise
proposals. One of these proposals, which was termed the “Specific
Divestment” plan, entailed immediate divestment from corporations doing
business with the South African military or police. The other alternative,
termed the “Deadline” plan, proposed to create a committee of students and
trustees to monitor “investment responsibility,” with the promise of total
divestment two years down the road if the committee was not satisfied with
the rate of progress shown in dismantling the apartheid system in South
Africa. Subjects were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions,
identical in all respects except for the particular program that the university
was purported to be on the verge of enacting. One group read that the uni-versity
planned to undertake Specific Divestment; another group read that
the university planned to undertake the Deadline plan; and the remainder
were given no reason to believe that the university was considering the
immediate adoption of either alternative. The experimental hypothesis, of
course, was simply that the “offered” concession plan would be devalued
relative to the “non-offered” one.
The results obtained in this study seemed once again to offer straightfor-ward
evidence for the predicted reactive devaluation phenomenon. That is,
students tended to rate whichever of the two proposals the trustees had
ostensively offered as a smaller and less significant compromise than the
alternative, non-offered, proposal. Thus, when Stanford purportedly was
ready to implement the Deadline plan, 85 percent of the respondents ranked
Specific Divestment as a bigger concession than the Deadline. By contrast,
when the university purportedly was ready to pursue Specific Divestment,
only 40 percent rated Specific Divestment as the more consequential of the
two compromise plans. Not surprisingly, when neither concession plan was
purported to be imminent, the percentage of students rating Specific Divest-ment
as a bigger and more significant concession than the Deadline plan was
between the extremes in the two experimental conditions—i.e., 69 percent.
Clearly, the “offered” versus “non-offered” status of the relevant divest-ment
plans influenced the student respondents’ evaluation of their apparent
significance and attractiveness.
The same basic result was replicated in a follow-up laboratory experiment,

in which students selected specifically on the basis of their strong and active
support for immediate and total divestment negotiated with a middle-aged
man (actually a confederate of the experimenter) who expressed a willing-ness
to defend the university’s interests and current policies. To prepare the
students for their forthcoming negotiation session, a packet of information
materials calling for their careful examination was mailed to them before-hand,
detailing the university’s holdings in firms doing business in South
Africa and indicating the record of those firms with respect to fair employ-ment
and affirmative action policies. The packet also included a list of
the most common arguments offered by opponents and supporters of
divestment.
During the negotiation itself, which often proved to be quite heated
(despite the participants’ awareness that any “agreements” they reached
would have no impact on actual university policy), the confederate for a time
stubbornly but articulately defended the university’s current “nonpolitical”
investment policy. In two experimental conditions, however, he ultimately
made a proposal that offered his student adversary a concession—either the
Specific Divestment plan (the same one used in our survey study) or a rather
surprising and peculiar “Reward for Disinvestment” plan (whereby the uni-versity
would not divest itself of anything but would channel $20 million in
additional investments into companies, such as General Motors, which had
already withdrawn from all business activities in South Africa). The experi-mental
design also included a control condition in which the confederate
offered no concession at all.
Subsequently, the subjects rated the attractiveness and significance of a
number of different proposals, including, of course, the ones that had been
offered in their negotiation session. And, as predicted, these ratings again
reflected the “offered” versus “non-offered” status of the relevant proposals.
Specifically, the familiar Specific Divestment plan received a more positive
rating than the peculiar Reward for Disinvestment plan, both when no con-cession
was offered and (even more so) when the confederate offered the
Reward for Disinvestment plan. Only when Specific Divestment was the
compromise plan explicitly offered did its ratings dip below those of the
Reward for Disinvestment plan.
The magnitude of the differences obtained in this laboratory experiment,
however, was not particularly impressive, and the investigators set out to
design a follow-up experiment that they thought would yield more conclu-sive
results. But this plan was thwarted by a new development in the
unfolding divestment drama at Stanford. As the academic year was drawing
to a close, the university at last reached a decision and prepared to announce
the enactment of its divestment plan—one, not coincidentally, that closely
resembled the Specific Divestment plan that had been employed in the two
earlier Stillinger et al. studies. This turn of events precluded further labora-
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tory or field experiments. At the same time, however, it presented the inves-tigators
with a golden opportunity to do one final study—this time looking
at evaluations of an actual compromise measure before and after it had been
publicly proposed in the context of an ongoing political struggle.
Having learned of the details of the university’s still unannounced plan
(by which it would divest itself of shares in ten companies, for a total of
about $3 million), Stillinger et al. quickly prepared a new survey asking stu-dents
to evaluate a number of possible compromise plans, including, of
course, the university’s soon-to-be-announced Specific Divestment plan.
This survey was administered to a sample of Stanford students on two occa-sions—
once before the university made its new divestment plan public (with
all proposed compromise plans, including the university’s actual plan,
described as merely “hypothetical”) and once shortly after the university’s
well-publicized announcements (this time accurately characterizing the uni-versity’s
plan as “about to be enacted,” while again characterizing the alter-native
plans merely as other hypothetical alternatives).
Participants’ responses in these two surveys provided the basis for a simple
before/after comparison to test for reactive devaluation. And the results of
this comparison were clear-cut, albeit no doubt disappointing to the univer-sity.
On the key measure involving apparent magnitude and significance of
concessions, the students’ mean ratings of Specific Divestment declined
after its planned enactment had been announced by the university. By con-trast,
none of the other merely “hypothetical” plans showed any such
decline in ratings. Indeed, slight increases in ratings were more typical for
these "non-offered" plans. In other words, it was only the offered compro-mise
plan, not compromise plans in general, that came to be seen as less
significant by the students over the critical three-week period following the
university’s announcement. Thus, consistent with the results of Stillinger et
al.'s previous study, the change in the students’ assessment of the relevant
compromise plan appeared to be a direct consequence of, and a reaction to,
the fact that the plan actually had been initiated.
To the extent that adversaries devalue the compromises and concessions
put on the table by the other side, they exacerbate an already difficult
dilemma: that of forging an agreement that the relevant parties, with their
differing views of history and their differing perceptions of entitlement, will
perceive to be better than the status quo and not offensive to their sense of
equity. Beyond alerting us to this dilemma, the Stillinger et al. studies raise
two important, ultimately related, questions. First, what processes or mech-anisms
might cause the offer of a concession or compromise proposal to
decrease its attractiveness in the eyes of the recipient? Second, what steps
might be taken, either by the adversaries themselves or by third-party medi-ators,
to overcome this barrier?

MECHANISMS UNDERLYING REACTIVE DEVALUATION
Research on reactive devaluation initially was undertaken to show that
biased construal of an adversary’s concession or compromise proposal could
lead to devaluation—and hence could launch a downward spiral of misunder-standing
and mistrust, whereby dismissal and lack of reciprocation by the
recipient of a proposal discouraged further initiatives. As that research pro-gram
evolved, however, it became increasingly clear that a number of differ-ent
psychological processes might underlie reactive devaluation—processes
that differ considerably both in their normative status and in their implica-tions
for negotiation theory and practice. Two specific processes, or rather
types of processes, merit consideration in more depth.
One set of underlying processes involves changes in perception, interpreta-tion,
or inference, either about individual elements in a proposal or about the
overall valence of that proposal. To the extent that the other side’s initiative
seems inconsistent with our understanding of their interests and/or past
negotiation behavior, we are apt, perhaps even logically obliged, to scruti-nize
their offer rather carefully. That is, we are inclined to look for ambigu-ities,
omissions, or “fine print” that might render the terms of that proposal
more advantageous to the other side, and perhaps less advantageous to our
side, than we had assumed them to be (or would have assumed them to be,
had the question been asked) prior to their being offered. The results of
such skeptical scrutiny—especially if the terms in question are unclear, com-plex,
or imperfectly specified, and especially if trust vis-à-vis implementa-tion
of these terms is called for—are apt to be a revised assessment of what
we stand to gain, both in absolute terms and relative to what we believe the
other side stands to gain, from acceptance of the relevant proposal.
This process of inference and deduction as psychologists would be quick
to note, could be even simpler and less cognitively demanding. Several theo-ries
of psychological consistency (e.g., Osgood and Tannenbaum 1955; also
Abelson and Rosenberg 1958; Festinger 1957; and Heider 1958) hold that
any relevant object of judgment (including, presumably, a concession offer
or a negotiation proposal) will be evaluated more negatively as a conse-quence
of its linkage to a negative source (including, presumably, an enemy
or adversary). In other words, no reinterpretation in fact no consideration of
content at all, need take place for devaluation to occur. One might simply
reason that if “they” are offering a proposal it must be good for them; and if
it is good for them (especially if “they” are adversaries who wish us harm) it
must be bad for “us.” Once again, although it is difficult to criticize such
inferential leaps on purely normative grounds, the danger should be obvious.
One can be led to conclude that any proposal offered by the “other side”—
especially if that other side has long been perceived as an enemy—must b e
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to our side’s disadvantage, or else it would not have been offered. Such an
inferential process, however, assumes a perfect opposition of interests, or in
other words, a true "zero-Sum" game, when such is rarely the case in real-world
negotiations between parties whose needs, goals, and opportunities
are inevitably complex and varied.
The second type of underlying process or mechanism, suggested by dem-onstrations
of the devaluation phenomenon in the Stanford divestment stud-ies
in which the source of the devalued proposal was not really an enemy of
the recipient, is very different. This mechanism involves neither mindful
nor mindless changes in interpretation but rather changes in underlying
preferences. Human beings, at least in some circumstances, may be inclined
to reject or devalue whatever is freely available to them, and to covet and
strive for whatever is denied them. Moreover, they may be inclined to do so
even when no hostility is perceived on the part of the individual or institu-tion
determining what will or will not be made available. (See Brehm 1966;
Brehm and Brehm 1981; also Wicklund 1974, for theoretical accounts of such
“psychological reactance”). The familiar aphorism that “the grass is always
greener on the other side of the fence” captures this source of human unhap-piness
and frustration very well, and it is easy to think of anecdotal examples
in which children or adults, rather than “counting their blessings,” seem
to place inordinately high value on whatever commodity or opportunity is
denied them.
A simple role-play study by Lepper, Ross, Tsai, and Ward (1994) docu-ments
this “change of preference” process quite clearly. At the same time,
this study provides further evidence that the reactive devaluation phenome-non
depends neither on an adversarial relationship nor on ambiguity in pro-posed
terms. The subjects in the study, all social science majors, were asked
to imagine that they had undertaken a summer job with a distinguished pro-fessor,
one which entailed low pay and unrewarding and difficult library
research. They further were asked to imagine that they later discovered that
the professor was on the verge of publishing, and receiving a hefty royalty
for, a chapter based heavily on their work. The fictional professor, however,
offered them neither additional money nor a coauthorship in recognition of
their efforts (two rewards that had been vaguely alluded to as “further possi-bilities”
if the student’s efforts led to a publishable article). Next, they were
asked to imagine that, after writing a polite but firm note to the professor
complaining about the lack of fair recognition or compensation and
reminding the professor of the vague assurances offered them at the outset
of the project, they had received one of two possible concessions—either a
“third authorship” (with their name following that of a second author who to
their knowledge had contributed little to the project) or a sum of $750.
Finally the students were asked to assess, among other things, the attrac-
R E A C T I V E D E V A L U A T l O N I N C O N F L I C T R E S O L U T I O N • 3 5

tiveness and value of the two relevant concessions—the one that they had
been granted by the professor and the alternative concession that had not
been granted.
Reactive devaluation was found, just as predicted. That is, it was the stu-dents
who had been granted the money who found the third authorship to
be the most attractive and of greater interest to them, and the students who
had been offered the third authorship who found the money most attractive
and valuable. These students, it is worth noting, gave no evidence of having
reinterpreted the meaning or reassessed the objective worth of the two rela-tively
unambiguous compromises in question. They simply expressed pref-erences
and values that seemed to be tilted in the direction of whichever
one of the two compromises had proven “unavailable” or been “withheld.”
A second study reported in the same paper by Lepper et al. extended
these findings and clarified two parameters that may influence the magni-tude
of reactive devaluation. In this follow-up study, students again evalu-ated
a “cash settlement” (this time $900 instead of $750) versus a “third
authorship” compromise granted by the professor. This time, however, two
factors were explicitly manipulated. These factors were the reputational sta-tus
of the professor and the exact nature of the promises that heightened the
students’ sense of entitlement to the concessions in question (both of which
deliberately had been left somewhat vague in the initial study). Thus, half
the students in the following study were told that the professor had been
cold and harsh in dealings with them, and exploitative in past dealings with
other prior research assistants, while half were given no such negative infor-mation
about the professor’s reputation or past dealings. At the same time,
half of the students within each “reputation” condition were told that the
professor had explicitly promised that publication would lead to additional
rewards in the form of money and/or authorship, while half were given no
information suggesting any prior assurances or other basis for heightened
feelings of entitlement.
The results of this follow-up study by Lepper et al. again were clear-cut.
Both the presence of a negative relationship and reputation based on past
dealings and the presence of prior assurances promoting a sense of entitle-ment
seemed to enhance the magnitude of the reactive devaluation phe-nomenon.
But neither factor proved necessary to produce the phenomenon.
That is, the fictional professor’s action in granting one particular concession
rather than another seemed to shift the recipient’s assessments and underly-ing
preferences even when there was neither an existing negative relation-ship
or reputation with respect to the source nor a strong basis for feelings of
denied expectation or prior entitlement on the part of the recipient.
A number of other psychological processes and mechanisms which may
also contribute to reactive devaluation merit at least brief mention even
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though they have not yet been pursued explicitly in the context of reactive
devaluation research. For instance, a seemingly equitable proposal for a
trade of concessions can become unattractive and inequitable in the eyes of
the recipient because of a judgment bias that Daniel Kahneman and Amos
Tversky (1984) have termed loss aversion (see also Chapter 3 in this volume).
What these investigators have documented is the fact that the aversiveness
of a given loss tends to be greater than the attractiveness of a gain of the
same objective magnitude. Thus, the very act of framing a proposal in a
manner that invites the other side to give up some things it values in order
to receive some other things it also values may leave the recipients of the
proposal convinced that the loss in question will not be commensurate with
the gain—even when a prior elicitation of the recipients’ values might have
led one to anticipate that the proposed trade of concessions would be wel-comed
quite eagerly.
The receipt of a specific concession or conciliatory proposal also can alter
the recipients’ aspiration or comparison level. The mere fact that one’s adver-sary
is willing to offer a concession can change one’s assessment of that
adversary’s flexibility and eagerness to deal. Accordingly, there is apt to be
an altered perception of the gains that might be achievable through further
toughness in bargaining, and also a new standard for comparison and a higher
level of aspiration. Such changes may thus broaden the gap between what is
sought and what is on the table— leading the recipient to rate the concession
less positively than it would have been rated beforehand, when it was merely
hypothetical. Indeed, it is this consequence that the practice of “strategic
intransigence,” discussed as a barrier to conflict resolution in Chapter 1 of
this volume, is designed to avoid; for early displays of intransigence can
serve to lower the adversary’s expectations and aspirations and perhaps
encourage that adversary to show more flexibility.
Still another possible mechanism may involve the “polarizing” effect of
mere attention or heightened scrutiny. Abraham Tesser (1978) has provided evi-dence
that instructions or procedures that “lead” experimental subjects to
consider various objects of judgment more deeply, or even simply for a
longer period of time, increase the positive or negative valence of those
objects. That is, favorable evaluations become even more favorable and,
more to the point, negative evaluations (including, presumably, negative
evaluations of concessionary proposals or compromises that inevitably offer
less than the recipient seeks and feels entitled to receive) become more neg-ative.
Furthermore, interpersonal processes can play a role in encouraging critical
scrutiny and resulting devaluation. When a compromise is proposed in the
context of a social or political struggle, it inevitably becomes the object of
pointed debate and propagandizing. As the aftermath of the Stanford divest-
R E A C T I V E D E V A L U A T I O N I N C O N F L I C T R E S O L U T I O N 3 7

ment conflict showed, “hard-liners” search for and find shortcomings, or at
least ambiguities, in the proposed terms; and they are apt to put their objec-tions
forward forcefully, both in informal discussion and in their comments
to the media. This process subjects the less militant members of the group
to persuasion and social pressure alike—both of which exert a force in the
direction of public devaluation of the other side’s proposal, and perhaps pri-vate
devaluation as well.
The preceding list of potential underlying mechanisms is by no means
intended to be exhaustive. Nor is it likely that all of these mechanisms were
operating in the reactive devaluation studies reviewed in this chapter.
(Indeed, the designs and measures employed by the investigators precluded
the operation of at least some of these mechanisms, showing that they are
not necessary to produce the phenomenon). But the list should be sufficient
to illustrate that the reactive devaluation phenomenon is likely to reflect the
operation of different types of processes in different contexts. Some of these
processes may seem more defensible on normative grounds than others, and
some may more commonly play an important role in producing the phenom-enon.
But all of them potentially may contribute to the difficulty of achiev-ing
conflict reduction through compromise and negotiation in the social,
political, economic, and ideological deadlocks that seem so pervasive a fea-ture
of contemporary life.
IMPLICATIONS: OVERCOMING REACTIVE DEVALUATION
The preceding discussion of the reactive devaluation phenomenon, and
of the various processes that might underlie it, has some implications for
those who seek to resolve disputes. Foremost, of course, is the likelihood
that compromise proposals or concessions designed to demonstrate goodwill
and prompt reciprocation will fail in their objectives. All too often, they will
be dismissed as trivial and token, or received with coolness and expressions
of distrust that serve to thwart the goal of negotiated agreement and to
weaken rather than strengthen the hand of those who urge conciliation. Fur-thermore,
such public dismissals or cool receptions are themselves apt to be
misattributed—to be seen as the product of calculated strategy rather than
genuine sentiment, or to be taken as evidence of a lack of good faith and
seriousness in the pursuit of agreement. Anticipating disappointing pitfalls
in the negotiation process, and correctly attributing them when they occur,
is important. But the research and analysis reviewed in this chapter also
point to some specific strategies that could prove helpful in overcoming reac-tive
devaluation and facilitating dispute resolution; and it is to these applied
concerns that the last section of this chapter will be directed (see also Ross
and Stillinger 1991)

The Use of Prior Elicitation and Concession Menus
Two strategies for reducing reactive devaluation follow rather directly.
Both are designed to discourage the recipients of a concession or compromise
proposal from reinterpreting its terms or reordering their own preferences in
ways that make the proposal seem less advantageous to them. The first strat-egy
involves explicitly eliciting the potential recipients’ values and prefer-ences
before making any concessionary proposal, and then explicitly linking
the content of the subsequent proposal to those expressed values and prefer-ences.
An invitation could be offered to exchange lists of concessions each
side not only indicating what it seeks and what it might be willing to offer
in “trade,” but also stipulating the relative importance it attaches to those
concessions. Each side could then use the other side’s responses to help
formulate and justify the specifics of the concessions offered and/or sought
in subsequent proposals. Again, the goal of such a strategy is twofold—first
to formulate mutually beneficial terms, and second to discourage reactive
devaluation by prompting the recipients of such proposals to attribute the
specifics of the proposed terms to their own expressed preferences and prior-ities
(rather than to hidden motives or private knowledge on the part of the
proposal’s initiator). The advantages of candid pre-negotiation exchanges of
goals and preferences are rather obvious. But such a strategy is probably
realistic only in negotiations characterized by a lack of enmity or distrust,
negotiations in which the parties have already embraced the objective of
maximizing mutual benefit.
A related strategy (one that offers less temptation for strategic misrepre-sentation
of goals, intentions, opportunities, or priorities) would be for one
side simply to offer the other a “menu” of unilateral concessions that it is
willing to make as a gesture to initiate a cycle of future reciprocal concessions;
and then to invite that other side to select the “pump-priming” concession
of its choice. It is worth contrasting the “menu of concessions” technique
described here with the well-known tension-reduction and agreement-seek-ing
strategy suggested by Osgood (1962). Osgood’s proposal called for the
initial unilateral concession to be chosen by the offerer. Such a choice, how-ever,
is apt to be seen as informative about its cost to the offerer and perhaps
even its value to the recipient. Furthermore, the recipient’s preferences and
priorities may change as well, making the offer seem less significant and
attractive. In the proposed “menu” strategy, the initial unilateral concession
is to be chosen by recipients in accord with their preferences, thereby min-imizing
such perceptions of informativeness or changes in preferences. What
we are suggesting here is a dispute resolution principle even simpler than the
suggestion to seek gains in trade: Tell your adversaries that you are willing to
take the first small step; stipulate or at least outline some possibilities that
clarify the magnitude of that step; and ask your adversaries what they want

(i.e., which initial, necessarily modest, pump-priming measure they would
value and deem worthy of reciprocation). Then, insofar as the nature and
magnitude of their request is consistent with the “menu” offered, give them
what they ask for.
Process Debriefing and Forewarning
It is worth exploring the possibility that insight or awareness about reac-tive
devaluation and the mechanisms or processes that underlie it could
serve to forestall or weaken such devaluation. In practical terms, the sugges-tion
is that the negotiation agenda include a pointed preliminary discussion
of barriers and underlying processes—including not only reactive devalua-tion
but other psychological and strategic barriers as well. It is apparent from
previous investigations in the field of judgment and decision making that
forewarning or inoculation concerning particular biases and the mechanisms
that underlie them sometimes “works” and sometimes does not work (see
Fischhoff 1981; Lord, Lepper, and Preston 1984; Ross, Lepper, and Hub-bard
1975). Clearly, the usefulness of such educational techniques vis-à-vis
reactive devaluation and dispute resolution is an empirical question worthy
of investigation. In fact, there are really two questions to be addressed. The
first and most obvious question concerns the value of pre-negotiation discus-sions
or briefings about reactive devaluation and the mechanisms that may
underlie it. The second, more general, and ultimately more provocative
question involves the value of educating fledgling negotiators about the psy-chological
processes that create barriers to dispute resolution and that foster
misunderstanding and distrust between parties involved in negotiation.
Addressing Attributional Concerns
As the discussion of mechanisms and potential remedies offered thus far
suggests, the psychological barrier of reactive devaluation hinges in part on
the assumption that disputants are bound to make attributions about each
other’s offers of compromise and concessions. Why is this particular compro-mise
being offered? Why is this particular exchange of concessions being
proposed? And why is the offer or proposal coming now?
When the stakes are high, these questions inevitably are considered. And
the answers likely to be deemed most plausible (for example, “they must
not value what they are proposing to concede” or “they must know some-thing
about the current situation that we don’t” or even “they don’t intend
to honor their side of the proposed agreement”) are ones that may serve to
encourage devaluation, to discourage reciprocation and to preclude the
desired creation of goodwill. Such attributions and consequences seem par-ticularly
likely when the relationship between parties is adversarial or hos-

tile, and trust is in short supply. The solution to this attributional dilemma
is simple, at least in theory. The side offering the proposal or concession
must help the other side to arrive at more benign attributions—in particular,
by clarifying the forces, constraints, or motives that are prompting it to com-promise
or offer such attractive terms. At times such candor may have a
strategic cost—one may be obliged to acknowledge weaknesses in one’s bar-gaining
position, or to reveal goals and plans that one would prefer to keep
hidden. But the benefit of such candor—that is, the increased prospects of
having one’s proposal taken at face value—may outweigh the strategic cost
more often than standard bargaining and negotiation lore would suggest.
Beyond pointing to the value of greater candor in the conduct of negotia-tion,
an awareness of attributional issues leads to the suggestion that negoti-ating
parties might benefit from the creation of additional external forces
compelling compromise and agreement. Setting deadlines (after which some
cost or loss of opportunity will be incurred), making plans or commitments
contingent on negotiation success, or even staking reputations on the prom-ise
of success are all strategies that not only prompt disputants to offer each
other concessions but also permit or even encourage them to take such offers
at face value.
Role of Third Parties
The “Reagan versus Gorbachev” disarmament proposal study discussed
earlier provided some evidence that attributing a given proposal to a neutral
third-party source instead of an adversary can reduce or eliminate reactive
devaluation. While the possibilities for such deceptive manipulations are
very limited in the conduct of real-world bargaining and negotiation, the
skilled third-party mediator can assume some responsibility for the framing
of proposals, especially proposals that the mediator explicitly links to the
parties’ expressed goals and priorities. The mediator can also encourage a
“problem-solving” orientation (Fisher and Ury 1981) in which the parties
seek to create additional value or to capitalize upon differences in the two
sides’ needs, preferences, and opportunities, rather than merely to accept
compromises that apportion dissatisfaction. More generally, third parties can
play a useful role in neutralizing the mechanisms that underlie reaction
devaluation and its potentially negative consequences. They can alert the
parties to the existence of the phenomenon and to its psychological rather
than strategic basis, thereby forestalling attributions and responses that
might heighten rather than attenuate conflict and mistrust. They can create
deadlines, incentives, and other pressures that not only encourage conces-sions
or compromise but also prompt benign attributions when they occur.
They can help create trust and goodwill. Most important, they can help the
parties to recognize that they are not in a zero-sum struggle; to see that

mutual as well as opposing interests exist, and that the other side’s author-ship
of a proposal is not necessarily evidence that their own side’s interests
would be better served by rejecting that proposal than by accepting it.
Negotiation Ideology and Expectation
The analysis of reactive devaluation and the barriers that underlie it, as
well as the more general discussion of negotiation barriers featured in this
volume, can leave the reader with unwarranted pessimism about the pros-pect
of successful dispute resolution. It is important, therefore, to remind
ourselves that difficult, even seemingly intractable disputes often do reach
resolution. In fact, in many potentially difficult negotiations (including the
passing of the federal budget, the election of a pope, and many labor-man-agement
confrontations) it is success rather than failure that history suggests
to be inevitable. In such cases, ideology and expectation seem critical. When
pessimism is widespread and rooted in a history of past negotiation failures,
the parties will find it difficult to offer meaningful compromises and equally
difficult to accept as meaningful any concessions offered in the proposals of
their adversaries. But when all parties enter the dispute resolution process
with the absolute conviction that their negotiations must and will succeed,
especially when such convictions are rooted in a history of consistent past
success, the parties are more likely not only to offer concessions but to inter-pret
“charitably” the concession offers they receive—i.e., as genuine com-promises
dictated by the imperative of reaching an agreement, and not
deceptive ploys that conceal private knowledge and hidden motives. Only
when failure is somehow “unprecedented” and “unthinkable” can one be
relatively certain that reactive devaluation, and the other barriers to dispute
resolution discussed throughout this volume, will be overcome. As a result,
parties are more likely to reciprocate the compromises they receive, thereby
moving the negotiation process closer to resolution.
42 • B A R R I E R S T O C O N F L I C T R E S O L U T I O N

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