Egocentrism drives misunderstanding in conflict and negotiation ¬リニ

• We examined the consequences of egocentrism in negotiations. • In mock negotiations, we independently manipulated each party's issue priorities. • After negotiating, parties judged the other party's interests. • Perceptions were more related to own interests than other party's actual interests. • Parties overestimated/underestimated the other parties' interests based on their own. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o A key barrier to conflict resolution is that parties exaggerate the degree to which the other side's interests oppose their own side's interests. Here we examine egocentrism as a fundamental source of such biased conflict perceptions. We propose that parties rely on their own interests and priorities when estimating those of the other side, and ignore the other side's true interests and priorities. Three experiments involving multi-issue negotiations provide strong evidence of such egocentric misperception. Participants judged their own important issues to be more important to their negotiation opponent, regardless of their opponent's actual interests (Experiment 1). Furthermore, accuracy increased when attention was experimentally focused on the opponent's interests rather than their own (Experiment 2), and perceptions of opponent's interests were more closely related to own interests than to the opponent's actual interests (Experiment 3). In the discussion, we highlight the broader implications of the egocentrism account for other areas of conflict. Introduction Social life is replete with examples of conflict. In everything from quarrels between lovers, negotiations between competing business factions, political debates, to wars between rival ethnic, religious, and national groups, individuals and groups often have conflicting interests or must compete over scarce resources. Although conflict can inspire creativity and strengthen social bonds, it more often creates narrow-mindedness, anger and resentment, and escalates into exceedingly hostile exchanges (De Dreu, 2010). Why this is the case, however, remains poorly understood. Why does communication break down and negotiators impasse rather than reach mutually satisfying agreements? Why do parties in a conflict develop increasingly negative perceptions of each other, overlook opportunities to achieve agreement, and become pessimistic about their ability to resolve their disputes? Although the exact mechanisms underlying conflict escalation are not well understood, much is known about social psychological processes (e.g., egocentrism, perspective-taking errors) that may contribute to the misperceptions that promote and sustain conflict. In the present work, we examine egocentrism (i.e., excessive self-focused attention) as a fundamental source of these misperceptions. One key barrier to …