Infuriating Impasses: Expressing Anger Increases Negotiation Impasses

Emotions influence negotiation impasses. Across three studies, we demonstrate that people interacting with angry counterparts become more likely to walk away from a negotiation, resulting in an impasse. In Study 1, participants who encountered counterparts expressing anger were more likely to choose an impasse, relative to those with neutral counterparts. In Study 2, we adopt an emotion-as-social-information perspective and find that people infer angry negotiators as being more selfish. In Study 3, we demonstrate that the timing of expressing emotions moderates the relationship between expressed anger and impasses. Collectively, our work reveals that expressing anger is risky in negotiations because people are particularly likely to infer their angry counterparts as selfish and walk away from the negotiation table.