Negotiation research has long treated alternatives-typically captured as BATNAs-as the central source of bargaining power. Stronger alternatives reduce dependence and are therefore assumed to improve negotiation outcomes, yet this structural account leaves much of the variance in negotiation behavior and outcomes unexplained. This review synthesizes emerging research and proposes a framework that organizes the effects of negotiation alternatives around four psychological pathways: aspirational, affective-motivational, cognitive, and strategic signaling. Through the aspirational pathway, alternatives serve as reference points that shape both negotiators' minimum acceptable standards, such as reservation prices, and their desired outcomes, such as aspiration levels. Through the affective-motivational pathway, alternatives influence feelings of power, optimism, and confidence. Through the cognitive processing pathway, alternatives alter negotiators' information processing and reduce their sensitivity to social pressure. Finally, through the strategic signaling pathway, negotiators reveal or conceal alternatives to signal leverage and shape their counterparts' expectations about bargaining power. We review how these mechanisms differentially explain key negotiation outcomes, including value claiming, value creation, impasses, and subjective value, and highlight contextual conditions that determine when different pathways dominate. By shifting attention from structural leverage to psychological processes, this framework integrates previously fragmented findings and identifies promising directions for research on how negotiators construct, interpret, and strategically deploy their alternatives.

Team negotiation research presents a paradox: teams sometimes achieve more integrative outcomes than solo negotiators, yet in other cases they escalate competitiveness and harm relational outcomes. Existing theory has not resolved this inconsistency, in part because it treats negotiating teams as if they could change positions as easily as individual negotiators. We argue this assumption overlooks a central constraint of team-on-team negotiation: before any adaptive external exchange can occur, teams must internally authorize revisions to their positions as new information emerges. Drawing on evidence from research on team negotiation, multiparty negotiation, and team design, we identify this internal capacity as a recurring but under-specified theme in prior work. We refer to it as mandate revisability: the ease with which a team can reopen, revise, and reauthorize its internal position during ongoing negotiation. We then show how five structural features - decision rules, authority concentration, communication patterns, agenda design, and role differentiation - shape this capacity and, in turn, link intra-team structure to inter-team behavior. This perspective helps explain why behaviors often interpreted as competitive rigidity may instead reflect internal authorization constraints. It also shows how seemingly inconsistent team negotiation outcomes can become more systematically predictable. We discuss implications for future research and practice.

Crowd-sourced replication initiatives reveal that cultural differences in findings, while undoubtedly important in some cases, are often smaller and less systematic than assumed. This makes empirical testing, rather than presumption, exigent. The extent to which developmental psychology theories generalize across cultures is an empirical question, best answered via small- and large-scale collaborations between partner laboratories across the world.

The same dataset can be analysed in different justifiable ways to answer the same research question, potentially challenging the robustness of empirical science1-3. In this crowd initiative, we investigated the degree to which research findings in the social and behavioural sciences are contingent on analysts' choices. We examined a stratified random sample of 100 studies published between 2009 and 2018, in which, for one claim per study, at least five reanalysts independently reanalysed the original data. The statistical appropriateness of the reanalyses was assessed in peer evaluations, and the robustness indicators were inspected along a range of research characteristics and study designs. We found that 34% of the independent reanalyses yielded the same result (within a tolerance region of ±0.05 Cohen's d) as the original report; with a four times broader tolerance region, this indicator increased to 57%. Of the reanalyses conducted, 74% reached the same conclusion as the original investigation, 24% yielded no effects or inconclusive results and 2% reported the opposite effect. This exploratory study indicates that the common single-path analyses in social and behavioural research should not be simply assumed to be robust to alternative analyses4. Therefore, we recommend the development and use of practices to explore and communicate this neglected source of uncertainty.

Music listening while working is prevalent in contemporary workplaces, with extensive research demonstrating its psychological and behavioral implications. Shifting focus from intra-individual outcomes, the present research examines the social implications of music listening at work. To do so, we adopt a novel third-party perspective to investigate how observers perceive and react to music listeners. Building on attribution theory, we argue that music listening is an ambiguous behavior that invites observers to make leisure or productivity attributions, thereby shaping how they perceive and treat music listeners. We hypothesize that observers perceive music listeners (vs. non-listeners) as less engaged if they attribute the listening to leisure rather than productivity. In turn, these engagement perceptions influence observers' judgments of the listener's performance and withdrawal, resulting in punitive observer reactions: decreased support and enacted incivility toward the listener. A dyadic field study, an online experiment, and a dyadic field experiment supported our hypotheses. Further analyses and supplemental studies identify antecedents of leisure-productivity attributions, consider alternative explanations (including possible positive outcomes), and explore likely boundary conditions (e.g., headphone type, generalizability across roles). We advance theory on music at work, observer attributions, and reactions, while highlighting the unintended social costs of this ubiquitous behavior.

Many employees lament that their inability to stop ruminating about work during nonwork time is one of their most significant work-related challenges, yet limited research has articulated actionable strategies to address this issue on a day-to-day basis. Integrating goal shielding theory with rumination theory, our model introduces nonwork goal reflection as a deliberate behavioral intervention employees can engage in to curtail work-related rumination, in a way that facilitates well-being during nonwork time. Specifically, we argue that engaging in nonwork goal reflection-where employees intentionally reflect on nonwork goals to be completed during their nonwork time-can curtail work-related rumination and is associated with enhanced well-being. Additionally, our model identifies employee workaholism as a boundary condition: The benefits of nonwork goal reflection for rumination (and well-being) are weaker (vs. stronger) for employees higher (vs. lower) in workaholism. We conducted a field experimental experience sampling study that supports our theoretical model. Additionally, we conducted several supplemental studies that enhance theoretical rigor and precision by examining the underlying assumptions of our model. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

A central finding in the power literature is that experiencing elevated power facilitates employees' goal-relevant cognitions and behaviors. In this work, we suggest that the relationship between power and goal pursuit is more complex than previously assumed. Specifically, we examine how experiencing power fluctuation-alternating states of high and low power during the workday-can uniquely promote employees' goal-relevant behaviors beyond the effect of static power. Integrating insights from the Dynamic Equilibrium Model of Organizing (DEMO) and the Model of Proactive Motivation (MPM), our work demonstrates that power fluctuation can facilitate employees' cognitive energy, in a way that enhances their goal-relevant cognitions and behaviors (goal clarity, resource acquisition, personal initiative, and goal progress). Furthermore, our work considers for whom these benefits are most pronounced, showing that power fluctuation is more strongly associated with cognitive energy (and subsequent goal-relevant outcomes) for employees higher (vs. lower) in trait mindfulness. Taken together, our findings offer new insights and challenge traditional static conceptions of power by illustrating how daily fluctuations in power can serve as a motivational force that enhances goal pursuit in the workplace.

Agentic behaviors are a critical pathway to power in contemporary organizations. Paradoxically, employees who lack power are the least likely to think and act agentically-creating a self-perpetuating cycle of disadvantage. Existing research on facilitating employee agentic behaviors relies on structural solutions that are often out of reach for individual employees. Yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that this view may be incomplete, as some individuals seem to be able to overcome the challenges powerlessness poses without relying on external resources, control, or organizational change. Integrating research on powerlessness and cognitive reappraisal, the present research proposes that cognitively reappraising powerless situations as opportunities can help individuals cope with the negative effects low power has on agency. A negotiation simulation (Study 1) and two experience-sampling field experiments (Studies 2-3) support our predictions: cognitive reappraisal attenuates the negative effects of low-power experiences on approach-related orientation (i.e., the Behavioral Approach System), which subsequently facilitates several indicators of agentic behavior, including employees' propensity to negotiate (Study 1) and their tendency to engage in voice and task proactivity at work (Studies 2-3). This research proposes a way to break the power-inaction link, suggesting that individuals may regulate their reactions to powerless experiences and offering an empowering and accessible strategy for sustaining agency.

Is it advantageous to make the first offer and to do so ambitiously? Although initial studies suggested clear advantages across cultures and contexts, recent findings have challenged the robustness of this first-mover advantage. A preregistered meta-analysis of 374 effects from 90 studies (Study 1; N = 16,334) revealed three beneficial effects of making the first offer: (a) a general first-mover advantage (g = 0.42, m = 80), (b) a positive correlation between first-offer magnitude and agreement value (r = 0.62, g = 1.56, m = 53), and (c) an advantage of ambitious (vs. moderate) first offers on agreement value (g = 1.14, m = 187). The meta-analysis also identified two detrimental outcomes of ambitious first offers: (d) fewer deals (i.e., more impasses; g =-0.42, m = 13) and (e) worse subjective value experienced by recipients (g =-0.40, m = 41). Two preregistered experiments (Study 2a-2b; N = 2,121) replicated both the beneficial and detrimental meta-analytic effects and simultaneously tested multiple psychological mechanisms driving these effects. Across the experiments, selective accessibility drove the effect of first-offer magnitude on counteroffers, while anger drove the effects on impasses and subjective value. Across both the meta-analysis and the experiments, negotiation complexity moderated both the beneficial and detrimental effects of first offers; as the number and type of issues (i.e., complexity) increased, the effects of first offers became smaller, and the mechanisms changed. Overall, the current meta-analysis and experiments collectively illuminate the direction, size, psychological pathways, and boundaries of first-offer effects in negotiations.

Past research suggests that when organizations communicate the benefits of their work for human welfare—that is, use a social impact framing for work—job candidates are willing to accept lower wages because they expect the work to be personally meaningful. We argue that this explanation overlooks a less socially desirable mechanism by which social impact framing leads to lower compensation demands: the perception among job candidates that requesting higher pay will breach organizational expectations to value work for its intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) rewards, or constitute a motivational norm violation. We find evidence for our theory across five studies: a qualitative study (Study 1), a hiring experiment with undergraduate students (Study 2), an online labor market field experiment (Study 3), a vignette-based simulation (Study 4), and a stimulus sampling study using multiple occupations (Study 5). Exploratory analyses find that the negative effects are unique to monetary (versus nonmonetary) job rewards. Together, results uncover a novel mechanism by which emphasizing work for the greater good leads job candidates to accept lower wages—one that reflects candidates self-censoring on pay from concerns about violating organizational norms rather than solely from a willingness to trade higher pay for potentially meaningful work. Our research contributes to understandings of how social responsibility messaging impacts workers’ perceptions of organizations and negotiation behavior. It also holds implications for emerging scholarship on managers’ implicit theories of employee work motivation. Funding: I. Hussain thanks the Dean’s Research Excellence Grant at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas Austin for generous financial support. The research also benefitted from Tier 1 Academic Research Funds awarded to M. Pitesa [Grant C207/MSS19B011] and M. Schaerer [Grant C207/MSS22B011] by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, and the Research & Development Fund of INSEAD. Supplemental Material: The online supplement is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1675 .

Because trust is essential in the development and maintenance of well-functioning relationships, scholars across numerous scientific disciplines have sought to determine what causes people to trust others. Power dynamics are known to predict trust, but research on the relationship between power and trust is inconclusive, with mixed results and without systematic consideration of how the relative power distribution within dyadic relationships may influence trust in those relationships. Building on interdependence theory, we propose that both individuals in an unequal-power dyad trust each other less than individuals in an equal-power dyad because unequal-power dyads heighten the perception of a conflict of interest. We demonstrate the effect of relative power on interpersonal trust across eight main studies and 16 supplemental studies (including 12 preregistered studies; total N = 10,531), and we test the mechanism with measurement-of-mediation and moderation-of-process approaches. We confirm that the effect of power on interpersonal trust occurs only with relative power (an interpersonal manifestation of power), not with felt power (an intrapersonal manifestation). Finally, we show that the effect of relative power on interpersonal trust via conflict of interest is attenuated in the presence of intergroup competition, a theoretically motivated moderator with practical implications. Overall, the present research clarifies the relationship between relative power and interpersonal trust, suggests that high- and low-power individuals may share similar psychological experiences within the context of unequal-power relationships, and highlights the importance of considering the context in which power dynamics occur. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).