Bargaining strength and group polarization in intergroup negotiations

In the context of a labour‐management simulation study, three‐man union teams were made to believe that they had either a very strong or a very weak bargaining position vis‐à‐vis the other party. In half of each of these conditions, a cooperative and a competitive orientation toward the other group was induced. In preparation for the intergroup negotiations, the subjects were first asked to indicate their individual aspirations for three negotiation issues. After a group discussion, their collective aspirations were obtained. Regardless of the experimental conditions. groups set significantly higher aspiration levels than individuals on the most important issue but were more conservative and cautious on less important issues. In general, for all three topics, significant or near‐significant interactions were found between bargaining strength and the direction of the group‐induced shift. In the strong bargaining condition, groups set higher aspiration levels than the average of prior individual judgments; in the weak bargaining condition the opposite trend occurred. An effort was made to relate these findings to the various theories developed in the ‘risky‐shift’ literature.