Negotiating Globally with Fearful Attachment: An Individual and Contextual Approach to Risk

The perception and regulation of risk have been much examined in negotiation theory but underexplored in the culture and negotiation literature, despite their important economic consequences for those negotiating globally. This research shifts the culture and negotiation literature to a new direction: We examine individual (fearful attachment) and contextual (negotiator role) predictors for global negotiators' risk perception and regulation strategies, and economic outcomes. Using social psychology's attachment to social groups construct, we show that sellers fearfully attached to their same-nationality social groups perceived greater risk and in turn were more motivated for relationship-building with the counterpart as a risk-regulating strategy (Study 1). Moreover, fearfully attached sellers, who used more risk-regulating, relationship-building strategies, e.g., fewer threats to walk away, claimed less value (Study 2). Our findings suggest that fearfully attached sellers regulate risk through motivation...