PSISOC11 - PSYCHOLOGY OF NEGOTIATION

The aim of the course is to offer a theoretical-applicative framework of negotiation skills in the broader repertoire of managerial and professional skills from which it emerges how the ability to generate value, welfare and development in organizations is a direct expression of widespread socio-cognitive skills in the negotiation management of conflicts. In particular, we will analyze from a cognitive and psychosocial perspective the foundations of those critical situations with the highest potential both destructive and generative for individuals and organizations, i.e. conflict processes defined as dynamics between multiple actors carrying configurations of representations, interests and values that are at least partially incompatible with each other in contexts characterized by scarce resources and salient affective and identity phenomena. It will therefore be clear that at the base of every daily development challenge there is ultimately the evolved management of continuous potentially conflicting interactions between individuals, groups or organizations.
The course will therefore provide the tools to understand the basic processes of the different conflict arenas and illustrating the fundamental approaches to deal with them, also in the light of cultural differences in international negotiation contexts.
Adopting a "heuristics and biases" perspective, the most insidious cognitive and affective traps that risk undermining the quality of negotiation agreements will be discussed, as well as the most effective methodologies to defuse them or at least mitigate their degenerative effects.
Finally, persuasive strategies will be analyzed, understood as a flexible repertoire of communicative and suggestive approaches capable of influencing the beliefs, attitudes, emotional states and behaviors of one's interlocutors. The progressive theoretical-applicative deepening of the different strategies will be punctually accompanied by ethical reflections on the opportunities and criticalities of their use in organizational contexts, within the general framework of a perspective that sees in the management of social influence one of the evolved modalities for the construction of meaning in organizations.

At the end of the course student will be able to: recognise, understand and describe the main epistemological issues underlying the approaches and paradigms of the negotiation processes, describe the origins and evolution of the negotiation psychology, describe to a non-academic auditorium the classic themes of the discipline, identify the main cognitive and psychosocial processes that influence the negotiation behaviors, analyse the interactions in the negotiations’ arenas distinguishing between intrapersonal, interpersonal, intra-group and intergroup dimensions, design psychosocial interventions that are functional to improve negotiation skills and to facilitate the reach of win-win agreements.