Rapport in Negotiation:
The Contribution of
the Verbal Channel
Journal of Conflict Resolution
56(6) 1089-1115
ª The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0022002712448913
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Ilan Bronstein1, Noa Nelson1, Zohar Livnat2 and
Rachel Ben-Ari1
Abstract
This study examined the contribution of verbal behavior to the creation of rapport
in negotiation, while methodologically addressing the issue of dependence between
dyadic measures, which is inherent to the concept of rapport, with the ActorPartner Interdependence model. The approach adopted is substantially different
from that of past research, which emphasized the contribution of nonverbal
behavior to rapport and used averaged rapport to asses it. Drawing both from the
theoretical concept of rapport and from Politeness theory, the authors developed
the Verbal Rapport Assessment scale. The authors found that rapport is indeed
encoded in the verbal behavior and that various verbal behaviors contribute to negotiators’ sense of rapport, as well as to the judgment of negotiators’ rapport behaviors. Likewise, the authors found that a negotiator’s sense of rapport was
primarily affected by his partners’ verbal behavior and by the interaction between
behaviors of both sides. These findings emphasize the importance of the verbal channel and the dyad in creating rapport in negotiation. Negotiation in the twenty-first
century is often characterized by exclusively verbal interactions (via telephone, chat,
and e-mails); negotiators from many different fields can benefit from these findings.
1
Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Department of Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
2
Corresponding Author:
Ilan Bronstein, Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Anna and Max Web Street, Ramat-Gan
52900, Israel
Email: ilan_bro@yahoo.com
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Keywords
rapport, negotiation, verbal behavior, verbal channel, conflict resolution, politeness
theory
The Nature of Rapport
In its dictionary definition, the term rapport designates ‘‘a close and harmonious
relationship in which there is common understanding’’ (Oxford English Dictionary
2005). In the day-to-day sense, rapport is related to ‘‘chemistry’’ and to a positive connection between people. It exists at the heart of social situations and has great importance in all areas of our social lives: ‘‘clinicians try to develop it with patients, sales
personnel try to use it to make a deal, and new acquaintances try to predict from it the
future of a relationship with one another’’ (Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal 1990, 285).
Likewise, ‘‘Hypnotists work to invoke it, teachers and trainers strive to maintain it, politicians and public speakers have the knack for creating it’’ (LaFrance 1990, 318).
From an empirical perspective, rapport contributes to the quality of relationships
in a variety of contexts: education (among students and between students and teachers; Perkins et al. 1995; Saidia 1990), psychotherapy (between therapists and clients;
Gfeller, Lynn, and Pribble 1987; Harrigan and Rosenthal 1983), and business
(between buyers and sellers and between service providers and customers; Gremler
and Gwinner 2000; LaBahn 1996). Rapport is critical in the context of negotiations,
since it provides a basis for creating trust (Drolet and Morris 1995) and influences
both the objective and subjective outcomes of negotiation (Curhan, Elfenbein, and
Xu 2006; Drolet and Morris 2000; Moore et al. 1999; Morris et al. 2002). Thus,
as Cappella (1990, 303) concluded, ‘‘The construct of rapport is arguably one of the
central, if not the central, construct necessary to understanding successful helping
relationships and to explaining the development of personal relationships.’’
In light of the centrality of rapport as a theoretical concept, various studies have
sought to isolate those variables that contribute to its emergence in interactions.
Early studies examined a range of variables including: compatibility between interactants’ peak alert times (Carey, Stanley, and Biggers 1998); the personal characteristics of interactants (such as gender and age; Goudy and Potter 1976); provision of
positive reinforcement and feedback during the interaction (Gfeller, Lynn, and Pribble 1987); degree of correspondence between interactants’ behaviors (Bernieri 1988;
Bernieri et al. 1994); and qualities of the interactants’ relationship, such as the extent
of personal disclosure (Morris et al. 2002).
Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal (1990) defined two characteristics of rapport that provide a theoretical basis for studying its antecedents and for distinguishing rapport from
other constructs relevant to interpersonal interactions (Drolet and Morris 2000). First,
rapport is defined as a variable that characterizes a pair or group and not as a personal
quality that is situated in the individual. Second, rapport is created via the expressed
behaviors of participants in an interaction (Bernieri et al. 1994, 1996; Grahe and
Bernieri 1999; Grahe and Sherman 2007; Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal 1987).
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The aims of the present study draw directly from these two characteristics. The
first aim is to employ a newer methodological approach that addresses the pair of
interactants as the unit of analysis. The second aim is to isolate the expressed verbal
behaviors that contribute to the creation of rapport, in contrast to past studies that
have focused primarily on nonverbal behaviors.
Rapport as a Variable Characterized at the Dyadic or Group Level
According to the first characteristic of rapport, the interaction that takes place
between two people is an entity unto itself and cannot be disassembled to its component parts (DePaulo and Bell 1990; Drolet and Morris 2000; Tickle-Degnen and
Rosenthal 1990). Merleau-Ponty observed that
In the experience of a conversation, a common ground constitutes itself between the
other one and myself, my thought and his make up a single tissue, my words and his
are called out by the phase of the discussion, they insert themselves in a common operation of which neither one of us is the sole creator. (Merleau-Ponty 1945, cited in Bernieri et al. 1996, 114)
The meaning of this characteristic is that the degree of rapport that arises in an interaction is the product of the synergy between participants and cannot be measured
regarding either one of them alone. This aspect of rapport is not obvious; most studies have examined rapport with respect to only one party to an interaction (e.g., the
degree of rapport felt by patients with respect to doctors [Harrigan and Rosenthal
1983], by clients with respect to therapists [Allen et al. 2003], and by students with
respect to professors [Perkins et al. 1995]). Other researchers recognized the need to
address dependence between interactants in rapport studies and tried to find a methodological solution for it (see, e.g., Bernieri et al. 1994, 1996; Puccinelli and TickleDegnen 2004). The prevalent solution so far has been to average the individual rapport scores reported by interactants, thus creating a common score, considering both
their rapport levels. While this answers interdyad dependence methodologically, it
presents conceptual issues (Baucom 1983; Christensen and Arrington 1987; Cook
and Kenny 2005). The main problem, as Christensen and Arrington (1987, 26869) put it, is that ‘‘for instance, a summing (or averaging) procedure could produce
results that would equate a couple in which one spouse is very satisfied and the other
unsatisfied with a couple in which both partners are moderately satisfied (the average marital satisfaction score would be the same). Most clinicians and researchers
would conceptualize these two cases in very different ways, and the unit resulting
from an averaging procedure would not capture these distinctions.’’ Hence,
regardless of the type of dyad (e.g., husband–wife, father–child, brother–sister),
summed or averaged scores may well create a mismeasure of the dyad (Cook and
Kenny 2005, 102).
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Moreover, averaging the scores makes it impossible to test how the behavior of
one party affects the feelings of rapport of the other party, because the rapport score
is a common one, and it does not allow for testing rapport effects in the appropriate
degrees of freedom, because it superficially reduces the sample size.
To address the dependence between measures of dyads, we used the ActorPartner Interdependence Model (APIM), which makes it possible to address the pair
as a unit of analysis and to examine the effects of each of the sides at appropriate
degrees of freedom (for further information, see Campbell and Kashy 2002; Cook
and Kenny 2005; Kashy and Kenny 2000; Kenny 1996). This is the first study to
apply APIM, which was created to account for interactants’ dependence, to the measure of rapport, which is a variable defined by this dependence. The APIM estimates
two kinds of effects: actor effects and partner effects. Actor effects are within-person
effects: they represent the contribution of an individual’s level of a predictor variable
to that individual’s level of an outcome variable. Partner effects are between-person
effects: they represent the contribution of a partner’s level of a predictor to an individual’s level of the outcome variable. In this way, the APIM provides separate, statistically independent tests of actor and partner paths, in which the effects of actor’s
independent variable on actor’s dependent measure were estimated while controlling
for the contribution of partner’s independent variable. Similarly, the effects of partner’s independent variable on actor’s dependent measure were estimated while controlling for the contribution of actor’s independent variable. With this approach, the
dyad is treated as the unit of analysis, and actor and partner effects are tested with the
proper degrees of freedom.
Rapport as a Variable Produced via Expressed Behaviors
Although expressed behavior includes both verbal behaviors and nonverbal
behaviors, until now most research has focused on the influence of the nonverbal
channel in creating rapport.
Nonverbal behavior. In their descriptions of the components and characteristics of
rapport, Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal (1987, 1990) claimed that rapport is created
and perceived primarily on the basis of nonverbal behaviors in interactions: ‘‘nonverbal behavior, as a particularly powerful medium of affective communication,
would be a key element in the mediation and emergence of feeling of rapport
between participants’’ (Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal 1990, 288).The primacy of
nonverbal behavior in fostering rapport was corroborated by Grahe and Bernieri
(1999), who found that external judges assessed rapport more accurately (i.e., their
assessments matched those of the actual interactants more closely) when they merely
watched an interaction than when they either read a transcript of the interaction, listened to it, or both watched and listened. Since judges’ assessments of rapport were
more accurate when exposed to the nonverbal channel than to the nonverbal and
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verbal channels together, Grahe and Bernieri conjectured that exposure to the verbal
channel can actually impair the accuracy of assessments of rapport.
Other studies have found that the degree of rapport in an interaction can be
assessed following exposure to a ‘‘thin slice’’ of the interaction (segments lasting
from 30s to 50 s; Bernieri and Gillis 1995; Bernieri et al. 1996; Gillis, Bernieri, and
Wooten 1995). While little meaning can be gleaned from the verbal content of such
short segments, nonverbal content can be expressed and perceived quickly
(DePaulo 1992). Thus, these findings demonstrate the importance of nonverbal
cues in fostering rapport. Moore et al. (1999) also demonstrated the importance
of nonverbal cues, in the context of a negotiation in which the two sides could not
see each other: the researchers found that pairs of negotiators who were shown
photographs of each other before the negotiation began reported greater rapport
than those who were not shown photographs. Hence, they concluded that exposure
to the photograph of the other party (a nonverbal clue) encouraged the emergence
of rapport.
These findings, in addition to the trend toward research of nonverbal behavior in
the 1990s (Jones and LeBaron 2002), brought researchers to try to identify which
particular nonverbal behaviors influence the emergence of rapport and its assessment by external observers. Bernieri et al. (1996) found significant relationships
between eight nonverbal behaviors (such as nodding, smiling, and leaning forward)
and the degree of rapport reported by participants having an argument, which
explained 56 percent of the variance in rapport. In an interaction that involved planning a trip on a map, on the other hand, they found significant relationships only
between two behaviors and reported rapport, which together explained 26 percent
of the variance. Grahe and Sherman (2007) examined the relationship between eight
nonverbal behaviors and the rapport felt by participants who had to assemble a puzzle while one participant gave instructions and the other, the assembler, was blindfolded. They found that reported rapport was related only to one behavior by the
instructor (gesturing) and one behavior by the assembler (nodding).
Researchers suggest that these discrepancies in explained variance are due to the
shifting focus of rapport across different interaction contexts: when an interaction is
internally focused (such as when the two sides sit facing one another and their primary stimulus is themselves, as during an argument), rapport draws heavily from
cues in the nonverbal channel. On the other hand, when an interaction is externally
focused (such as when the sides are not required or able to see one another, as during
the construction of the puzzle), the nonverbal channel plays only a minimal role
(Bernieri et al. 1996; Puccinelli, Tickle-Degnen, and Rosenthal 2003).
This distinction raises the question of how rapport is produced when participants
to an interaction are not required, nor able to see one another. We suggest, in a manner increasingly relevant to the technology of interpersonal communication today,
that when the means of communication prohibit exposure to nonverbal behavior
(such as telephone and computer-mediated communication; Croson 1999), rapport
will draw more heavily from behaviors in the verbal channel.
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Verbal behavior. Although comparatively sidelined in past research, verbal behavior can significantly contribute to the emergence of rapport, particularly in negotiation. Archer and Akert (1977) found that when interactants could hear one another,
correlations between the coding of the message by the sender and the decoding of the
message by the recipient was significantly greater than when participants saw one
another but could not hear one another. Berry et al. (1997) found that first impressions are meaningfully influenced by verbal content, above and beyond the variance
explained by nonverbal clues. Although these two studies did not assess rapport,
they illustrate that the verbal channel has a meaningful role in the perception and
interpretation of interpersonal information. Likewise, Whichman (1970) found that
negotiators who were exposed to the verbal channel (could only hear, but not see,
each other) cooperated to a greater degree than negotiators who were exposed to the
nonverbal channel (could only see, but not hear, each other). Although rapport was
not directly examined in this study, the degree of cooperation in negotiations has
been found to correlate with rapport (Drolet and Morris 1995, 2000).
The few studies that have sought to isolate the contribution of specific verbal
behaviors to rapport have been carried out in the psychotherapeutic context. These
studies found that the more therapists expressed reflections of emotions, restatements, verbal reinforcements, and silences (of up to 33 s), the greater the rapport felt
by their clients (Gfeller, Lynn, and Pribble 1987; Sharpley 1997; Sharpley et al.
2000). As the psychotherapeutic context is highly verbal, this points to a possible
connection between the verbal channel and rapport in other contexts as well.
Other studies have examined the influence of verbal behaviors on the quality of
interactions. Clark, Drew, and Pinch (2003), for example, identified a number of verbal behaviors by sales agents (such as agreement and reinforcement) that brought
about greater expressions of affiliation and of commitment to purchase a product
by their customers. Although rapport was not directly measured by the researchers,
they related these verbal behaviors to the sense of rapport that customers felt. Similarly, Planken (2005) found that expert negotiators made greater use of ‘‘safe talk’’
(talk that is not directly directed at or relevant to the content of the negotiation) and
pronoun use (such as we and us) than nonexpert negotiators, two verbal measures
that are positively correlated with relationship quality, and hence possibly to rapport.
The Present Study
The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the role of the verbal
channel in the production of rapport in negotiation interactions. Rapport was
methodologically treated as a dyadic variable. The research hypotheses suggest
that verbal behaviors by both negotiators (the Actor and Partner) contribute to
the sense of rapport felt by both negotiators; thus, rapport is addressed as a
dyadic/interactive variable.
The research model was examined in two stages. First, we investigated the degree
to which rapport drew from the verbal behaviors of interactants. This was assessed
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by comparing the degree of rapport experienced by negotiators and the assessment of
rapport by an external judge who read a transcription of the negotiation. We
hypothesized that (a) participants’ rapport would positively correlate with the assessments of the external judge and (b) the judges’ assessment of whether one side’s verbal behavior contributed to rapport would positively correlate with the degree of
rapport reported by the other party.
Second, we identified specific verbal behaviors that contributed to the negotiators’ sense of rapport and to the assessment of rapport by external observers. We
hypothesized that as interactants used more verbal behaviors that contributed to rapport and fewer verbal behaviors that impaired rapport: (a) the greater rapport they
would experience, (b) the greater rapport would be experienced by the negotiating
partner, and (c) the greater the external judge’s assessment of the contribution of that
interactant’s behaviors to fostering rapport. To examine these hypotheses, we constructed a tool measuring diverse verbal behaviors and their contributions to rapport
in negotiation.
Method
Participants
Participants were 292 undergraduate students at an Israeli liberal arts university, who
took part in the study in exchange for payment of 25 New Israeli Shekels (NIS, the
Israeli currency. 1$ = 3.7 NIS) (about $6). Six pairs were eliminated from the sample
due to insufficient data (questionnaires or negotiation simulations that were not completed or recorded well), leaving 280 participants in the study (140 pairs), of which
58 percent were women. Participants ranged in age from eighteen to fifty-nine years
(M ¼ 23.5, SD ¼ 4). Participants signed their agreement to participate in the study
and to have segments of the simulation recorded.
Tools and Procedure
Stage 1: Negotiation Simulation. To prevent gender bias, participants were matched to
achieve thirty-one male–male pairs, fifty-four female–female pairs, and fifty-five
mixed-sex pairs (of which in twenty-seven the interviewer was male and in twentyeight female). Aside from this restriction, pair and role assignment was random.
Participants pairs were invited to the lab at staggered intervals so they would not
see each other. The first participant was seated behind a screen, which separated the
participants throughout the experiment. This arrangement isolated the verbal channel by averting exposure to nonverbal clues such as body language, physical appearance, and the like. Further, this arrangement made possible a natural, free, and
continuous flow of conversation (in contrast to computer-mediated communication,
in which nonverbal clues such as intonation and vocal intensity are completely neutralized but the flow of utterances is disrupted and artificial).
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Once the two participants were seated, they were told that they would be taking
part in a negotiation simulation regarding the employment conditions of a candidate
for a sales position (the interviewee) and a chief financial officer (the interviewer) at
an office supplies company. Each participant received written instructions in accordance with his or her role: the interviewee was informed that his target salary was
5,000 NIS, whereas the interviewer was told that she wished to pay no more than
3,500 NIS. Neither side knew the other’s interest in advance, and neither were given
instructions as to how to bridge the gap or by what parameters they should try to do
so (e.g., insurance, vacation time), as this was thought to potentially narrow the verbal content of the negotiation. Thus, aside from the structured gap in interests, negotiators were free to bridge the disparity as they saw fit. This method was meant to
enable rich, creative, and personal verbal expression by the negotiators.
Following these instructions, the interviewer and interviewee began the simulation, which was recorded. For the sake of consistency, a set amount of time (15 minutes) was allotted for each negotiation. Following the simulation, the participants
were asked to complete two self-report measures on rapport—one reflecting their
assessment of the quality of the negotiation, and the other their feelings during the
interaction—and a questionnaire on background data. Once they completed the
questionnaires the experimenter reimbursed participants and allowed them to meet,
verifying that they had never met previously.
Rapport questionnaire 1: Characteristics of the interaction. The 18-item Rapport Questionnaire (Bernieri et al. 1994; Bernieri 2005) is a self-report measure that includes 18 items
characterizing an interaction as ‘‘boring,’’ ‘‘satisfying,’’ ‘‘intense,’’ and the like. The questionnaire was translated for the purpose of this study by a doctor in psychology, a doctor in
linguistics, and two graduate students in psychology, all bilingual. Back-translation verified
the accuracy of the translation. Responses were rated by each party to the interaction on a
scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 8 (very much). Scores were averaged, with higher scores
indicating that the participant perceived greater rapport. Factor analysis revealed only one
factor for the 18 questionnaire items, which showed high internal consistency (Cronbach’s a
¼ .88).
Rapport questionnaire 2: Feelings during the interaction. This questionnaire is based
on items used by LaBahn (1996) and Curhan, Elfenbein, and Xu (2006), which were
amended and translated for the purpose of this study by two bilingual doctoral students in psychology and back-translated for accuracy. The questionnaire contained
three items assessing parties’ feelings about the interaction: the first item, taken from
LaBahn (1996), assesses participants’ sense of chemistry; items 2 and 3, taken from
Curhan, Elfenbein, and Xu (2006), assess participants’ satisfaction with the negotiation process and willingness to negotiation again with the other person. Participants
responded on a scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 8 (very much). Rapport for each
participant was calculated as the average of the three items, such that higher scores
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represented a greater sense of rapport. The three items showed high internal consistency (Cronbach’s a ¼ .87).
The rationale for using two questionnaires was to compare measures of rapport
based on interaction characteristics with those based on the feelings experienced
by interactants. However, since Pearson correlations showed that correspondence
between the two questionnaires was very high (r ¼ .78, p < .001), since the results
using the two questionnaires were similar and for sake of efficiency, we employed
only the shorter questionnaire in the data analysis.
Background data. On this questionnaire, participants recorded their sex, age, family status, and other questions.
Stage 2: Evaluation of Rapport Characteristics Expressed in Verbal Behavior. The recorded
simulations were transcribed by eight psychology students, who were trained in transcription by a doctor in linguistics. These transcriptions were then assessed by thirteen judges, also psychology students, who were each provided a random selection
of ten to twelve transcriptions for evaluation. Judges were asked to read and score
the transcribed simulations on to two scales: one assessing the rapport characteristics
evident in the interaction, and the other the rapport characteristics expressed by individual negotiators. Both scales were constructed for the purpose of the present study
by a professor and two graduate students in psychology.
Interaction Rapport scale. Following Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal (1990), this 11item scale was constructed to represented the three dimensions of rapport in interaction: positivity (pleasant atmosphere, absence of aggression, positivity, negativity),
coordination (cooperation, like-mindedness among participants, synchrony, flexibility), and mutual attention (listening, tolerance, attentiveness). Judges rated the interaction per each item on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Factor
analysis revealed that all items loaded on a single factor having high internal consistency (Cronbach’s a ¼ .96). Accordingly, a single average score was calculated per
interaction, with higher scores indicating the interaction was judged to express more
rapport.
Negotiators’ Rapport scale. This scale was identical to the Interaction Rapport scale
described above, except that items were worded to address the rapport characteristics expressed by each individual negotiator, interviewer and interviewee, rather
than the interaction as a whole. Factor analysis per each negotiator produced a single
factor having high internal consistency (Cronbach’s a ¼ .93). Scores were thus averaged, with higher scores indicating that the negotiator was judged to more strongly
express rapport characteristics.
Stage 3: Evaluation of the Contributions of Specific Verbal Behaviors to Rapport
Identification of verbal behaviors. In order to assess the contributions of specific verbal behaviors to rapport, we constructed the Verbal Rapport Assessment scale
(VeRAS), a tool for analyzing the verbal content in negotiation that may be related
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Table 1. Verbal Variables According to Domains of Verbal Behavior
Speech Act Domain
Head Acts
Supportive Moves
Discourse
Domain
Request
Command
Positive softening
Positive intensification
‘‘Small talk’’
Personal interest
Participation Domain
Request for confirmation
Correcting a
misunderstanding
Suggestion
Negative softening
Positive message Greetings
Promise
Negative intensification Positive emotion Departing wishes
Setting conditions Criticism
Negative message Use of first name
Threat
Disparagement
Negative emotion Signs of attention
Agreement
Minimization of
Personal
Interruption and overlap
importance
Exposure
Acceptance
Explanation
Confirmation
Disagreement
Willingness to be
flexible
Nonacceptance
Insistence
Apology
Thanks
Compliment
Question
to rapport. To construct the tool, we first mapped a broad range of verbal behaviors
culled from the literature on pragmatic linguistics, which addresses how speakers
use verbal expression to bring across meaningful messages. We focused on politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1987), which is particularly relevant to the concept of rapport because it describes how interactions between individuals can
improve or harm impressions and feelings. We reduced the amassed range of possible verbal behaviors to forty of the most frequent behaviors in politeness theory literature, and sorted them according to the three verbal domains set out in politeness
theory and its elaborations (Matsumoto 1989; Spencer-Oatey 2000): speech acts,
discourse, and participation (see Table 1).
The speech acts domain is the domain that most greatly influences the preservation or injury of face (Brown and Levinson 1987), and includes two kinds of utterances: head acts and supportive moves. A head act is an utterance via which the
speaker carries out an act of some kind using language (e.g., I pronounce you man
and wife; Austin 1962; Searle 1969). Other examples of speech acts include requests,
promises, commands, threats, criticisms, compliments, agreements, disagreements,
apologies, and expressions of thanks (Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper 1989). Supportive moves are words or utterances adjacent to the head act that change its force,
either by softening (e.g., I somewhat agree) or intensifying (I totally agree).
The discourse domain addresses the personal and pragmatic content of the interaction, such as speakers’ choice of topics (e.g., whether they will speak strictly about
negotiated issues or whether they will also engage in person conversation and small
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talk) and the valence of the discussion (e.g., whether interactants will express positive or negative emotion toward each other, and whether they will evaluate the interaction content in a positive or negative manner via such words as great, terrible, and
the like).
Participation domain includes the procedural aspects of the interaction, such as
coordination of turn-taking in conversation and demonstrations of attentiveness
(by means of such interjections as uh-huh, yes, and the like).
Scoring frequency of verbal behaviors. Once verbal behaviors were identified, we
scored their frequency in the simulation transcriptions. Scoring was carried out by
eleven psychology students who evaluated twelve to fourteen randomly selected
transcripts each, and who were specially trained for the task by a graduate student
in psychology and a doctor in linguistics. In order to examine interjudge reliability,
eighteen random simulations were coded by all judges, without their knowledge.
Internal consistency analyses made on these simulations revealed high interjudge
reliability (Cronbach’s as > .97). Scores were divided by the number of words spoken during the negotiation in order to reduce possible effects for text length, and
were multiplied by 100 to achieve numbers greater than one. Three scores were
reached for each simulation, reflecting the frequency of verbal behaviors expressed
by the interviewer, the interviewee, and both together (divided, respectively, by the
total number of words spoken by interviewer, interviewee, or both).
Clustering verbal behaviors. We sought to reduce the number of verbal variables by
clustering them into factors, on the basis of their content, and by reaching an agreement between fourteen judges (a psychology professor, a doctor in linguistics, two
graduate students in psychology, and ten undergraduate psychology students). This
process produced thirteen verbal variables, including each of the verbal behaviors
presented in Table 1, excluding two (explanation and apology), for which agreement
was not reached as to which factor they belong to. Intercorrelations between these
variables, as well as correlations between them and dependent variables (negotiators’ felt rapport and rapport characteristics as evaluated by external judges), are presented in the appendix.
We tried to sort the thirteen verbal variables into each of the three domains that
make up rapport (positivity, coordination, and attentiveness); however, interjudge
agreement regarding which domain each variable belonged to was low. Thus, verbal
variables were sorted into two agreed domains: variables related to the discourse
process and those related to the discourse content.
The content domain addresses the personal and pragmatic content of the interaction, such as speakers’ choice of topics (e.g., whether they will speak strictly about
negotiated issues or whether they will also engage in person conversation and small
talk) and the valence of the discussion (e.g., whether interactants will express positive or negative content toward each other and whether they will evaluate the
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Table 2. Verbal Rapport Assessment Scale (VeRAS)—Verbal Behaviors and Their Expected
Contribution to the Creation of Rapport, by Domains and Content
Contribution to Rapport
Domain
Discourse
process
Discourse
content
Positive contribution
Negotiation process Acts facilitating negotiation
Responses facilitating
negotiation
General process
Synchrony
General content
Direct positive content
Indirect positive content
Relationship
Affiliative content
Content
Politeness
Negative contribution
Acts inhibiting negotiation
Responses inhibiting
negotiation
Asynchrony
Direct negative content
Indirect negative content
Distancing content
interaction content in a positive or negative manner via such words as great, terrible,
and the like).
The process domain includes the procedural aspects of the interaction, such as
coordination of turn-taking in conversation and demonstrations of attentiveness
(by means of such interjections as uh-huh, yes, and the like).
In each of these domains, a further distinction was made between variables
related to discourse generally and those related to the negotiation in particular. In
addition, we distinguished between verbal variables making a positive versus negative contribution to rapport. The final outcome, which embodies the VeRAS tool, is
presented in Table 2.
As can be seen in Table 2, we predicted that seven verbal behaviors would
positively contribute to rapport and six would hinder rapport. Of behaviors that
are directly related to the negotiation process, acts facilitating negotiation
include recommendations, requests, and promises; responses facilitating
negotiation include acceptance, agreement, and willingness for flexibility; acts
inhibiting negotiation include requests and setting conditions or ultimatums; and
responses inhibiting negotiation include nonacceptance, disagreement, and
insistence. We predicted that acts and responses advancing negotiation would
contribute to the creation of rapport in negotiation, since these point to positivity
and attentiveness to the desires and interests of the other. Acts and responses
that hinder negotiation, as mirror images of the former, will retard the
emergence of rapport.
In the domain of behaviors related specifically to the interaction process, those
expressing synchrony verify that the sides are on the same ‘‘wavelength’’ and that
they understand each other correctly (signaling attentiveness, asking questions,
requesting confirmation, and providing confirmation), while asynchronous acts
impair coordination between the sides at the procedural level (interrupting
or repeating what has been said). Accordingly, synchrony is hypothesized to
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contribute to rapport and asynchrony to retard rapport. Behaviors related to the
interaction content may be positively or negatively valenced. These include direct
positive content (expressing positive emotions and transmitting positive messages), indirect positive content (softening a negative message or intensifying a
positive message), direct negative content (expressing negative emotions and
transmitting negative messages), and indirect negative content (intensifying a
negative message or softening a positive message). We predict that positive
content categories will bolster rapport, while negative content categories will
hinder the emergence of rapport.
The domain of behaviors related to the relationship includes affiliative content (personal interest, compliments, personal exposure, and use of first name),
distancing content (criticism, disparagement, threat, and minimization of the
importance of what the other has said), and politeness (greetings, departing
wishes, and conventionally polite words such as those expressing thanks). We
predict that affiliative content will encourage rapport since it expresses positive
attention toward the other, and that expressions of politeness will also contribute
to the creation of rapport, since politeness is a convention in interaction management that expresses basic concern for the relationship. In contrast, distancing
content, which expresses negatively toward the other, will retard the emergence
of rapport.
Results
The Encoding of Rapport in the Verbal Channel
To assess whether negotiators’ sense of rapport was encoded in expressed verbal
behavior, we calculated correlations between negotiators’ self-reported sense of rapport and the evaluations of rapport characteristics by external judges, where both
negotiators and judges had been exposed only to the verbal channel. In accordance
with Hypothesis 1, judges’ rapport scores were positively correlated with the averaged rapport scores of interviewer/interviewee pairs, r ¼ .36, p < .001. That is,
judges who merely read transcripts of negotiations were able to accurately assess the
sense of rapport felt by negotiators.
With respect to the second hypothesis, we found, as hypothesized, that judges’
ratings of the rapport characteristics exhibited by one partner were positively correlated with the sense of rapport experienced by the other partner, r ¼ .32, p < .001. In
other words, the more one side was externally judged to exhibit characteristics of
rapport (flexibility, attentiveness, and the like), the more that person’s negotiating
partner felt a sense of rapport. These findings affirm that rapport is encoded in
expressed behaviors.
It is worth noting that the correlation between interacting negotiators’ levels of
rapport was r ¼ .20 (p < .05), lower than the correlation between negotiators and
judges. We address this point in the Discussion section.
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Journal of Conflict Resolution 56(6)
Table 3. HLM Coefficients for Predicting Negotiators’ Level of Felt Rapport from Their
Verbal Behaviors (N ¼ 280)
Effects
Individual level (df ¼ 272)
Dyad level (df ¼ 138)
Actor’s
behavior
Partner’s
behavior
Actor’s Partner’s
Behavior
.16*
.12*
.13*
0.01
0.02
.16*
.14*
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.04
0.1
0.03
.20*
0.02
0.05
0.03
.15*
0.02
.14*
.18*
0.05
0.03
.12*
0.09
.21**
Behaviors related to the negotiation process
Negotiation facilitating acts
.06
Negotiation inhibiting acts
.03
Negotiation facilitating
.11
responses
Negotiation inhibiting
.05
responses
Behaviors related to the interaction process
Synchrony
.17**
Asynchrony
.08
Behaviors related to the interaction content
Direct positive content
.13*
Direct negative content
.06
Indirect positive content
.04
Indirect negative content
.05
Behaviors related to interpersonal relations
Politeness
.03
Positive interpersonal
.10
content
Negative interpersonal
.06
content
Note. HLM = hierarchical linear modeling.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
Contributions of Verbal Behaviors to Negotiators’ Sense of Rapport
In order to examine the contributions of verbal behaviors to negotiators’ sense of
rapport while addressing the interdependence between interactants’ measures of rapport, and in order to distinguish the unique contributions of each behavior to rapport,
we carried out data analyses according to the APIM using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM; Bryk and Raudenbush 1992). This method enables examination of
within- and between-subject effects for rapport and combined effects (between and
within subjects) at the dyadic level.
At the individual level, we examined the unique contributions of the
behaviors of actors and partners to actors’ sense of rapport. At the dyadic level,
we examined the unique contribution of the interaction between the behaviors of
actors and partners to actors’ sense of rapport. HLM coefficients for predicting
degree of rapport as an outcome of the verbal behaviors of negotiators are
presented in Table 3.
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Bronstein et al.
1103
Behaviors related to the negotiation process. Partners’ negotiation-facilitating acts
and responses contributed to actors’ sense of rapport (b ¼ .16 and 13, respectively;
ps < .05), while those inhibiting negotiation curtailed actors’ sense of rapport (b ¼
.12 and .14, respectively; ps < .05). That is, as partners exhibited more acts and
responses that facilitated negotiation, and fewer acts and reactions that inhibited
negotiation, actors reported feeling greater rapport.
Likewise, we found that the main effect of partners’ negotiation-facilitating
responses on actors’ sense of rapport was moderated by the interaction between the
behaviors of the actor and partner (b ¼ .16, p < .05). Probing the interaction using
Aiken and West’s (1991) simple slope test and Preacher, Curran, and Bauer’s (2006)
computational tool revealed that partners’ negotiation facilitating responses had an
effect on actors who expressed few negotiation facilitating reactions (b ¼.28, p <
.01), but not on actors who were high in those behaviors. In other words, among
actors who expressed few negotiation-facilitating reactions, the more the partner
used such reaction, the greater the actor’s level of rapport.
Behaviors related to the discourse process. Actors’ synchrony positively contributed
to their feelings of rapport (b ¼ .17, p < .01). That is, actors who express more synchrony also reported feeling greater rapport.
Behaviors related to discourse content. Actors’ direct expressions of positive content
positively contributed to their sense of rapport (b ¼ .13, p < .05), and partners’ direct
expression of negative content curtailed actors’ sense of rapport (b ¼ .20, p < .05).
That is, as actors expressed more direct positive content, and as partners expressed
less direct negative content, actors felt greater rapport. Likewise, the contribution of
partners’ direct negative content to actors’ sense of rapport was moderated by the
interaction between the behavior of the actor and partner (b ¼ .15, p < .05). Probing
the interaction showed that among actors expressing little direct negative content,
the more partners expressed direct negative content, the less rapport those actors felt
(b ¼ .35, p < .001). A similar interaction was found between expressions of indirect negative content by actors and partners (b ¼ .14, p < .05); further investigation
of the interaction indicated that among actors who expressed little indirect negative
content, the more partners expressed indirect negative content, the less rapport those
actors felt (b ¼ .23, p < .01).
Behaviors related to the relationship. Partners’ demonstrations of politeness positively contributed to actors’ sense of rapport (b ¼ .18, p < .05). That is, the more
partners demonstrated politeness, the greater actors’ reported feelings of rapport.
The interaction between actors’ and partners’ expressions of positive (i.e., affiliative) interpersonal content was significant (b ¼.12, p < .05). Analyses probing the
interaction indicated that among actors who expressed more affiliative content, the
more the partner expressed affiliative content, the greater rapport actors felt (b ¼.19,
p < .01). Likewise, an interaction was found between actors’ and partners’ expressions of distancing content (b ¼ .21, p < .01). Elaboration showed that among actors
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Journal of Conflict Resolution 56(6)
who expressed little distancing content, the more partners expressed distancing content, the less rapport actors felt (b ¼ .30, p < .001). Figure 1 summarizes all findings graphically.
Contributions of Verbal Behaviors to External Judgment of Rapport
Characteristics
We carried out hierarchical regression analyses to assess the unique contributions of
verbal behaviors to predicting external judges’ evaluations of negotiators’ rapport
characteristics. Regression analysis was used in place of the APIM model because
judges’ evaluations, in contrast to negotiators’ self-reports, comprise a single score
and hence are not dependent on another measure.
Variables were entered on the basis of the four domains by which the thirteen verbal behaviors were categorized: in the first step, verbal behaviors related to the negotiation process were entered; second, behaviors related to the interaction process;
third, behaviors related to the content of the interaction; and fourth, behaviors related
to the relationship. Negotiators’ verbal behaviors explained 39 percent of the variance in external judges’ scores of negotiators’ rapport characteristics. Data are presented in Table 4.
As can be seen in Table 4, behaviors related to the negotiation process explained
19 percent of the variance in judges’ scores. Each of the variables entered in this step
made significant contributions, and these remained stable throughout subsequent
steps of the regression. In the second step, verbal behaviors related to the discourse
process contributed a further 11 percent to the explained variance. Both variables
(synchrony and asynchrony) were significant and contributions remained stable in
all subsequent steps. In the third step, behaviors related to discourse content contributed a further 9 percent to the explained variance; however, of four variables, only
indirect negative content was significant. Verbal behaviors related to the relationship, which were entered in the fourth step, made no contribution. These findings
indicate that the more negotiators expressed facilitative acts/reactions and synchrony, and the less they expressed hindering acts/reactions, asynchrony, and indirect negative content, the higher external judges’ evaluations of their exhibited
rapport characteristics.
Discussion
The purpose of the present study was to examine the role of the verbal channel in
fostering rapport in negotiation, while methodologically treating rapport as a
dyad-level variable. To examine the role of the verbal channel, we pursued three primary research questions: (a) whether rapport is encoded in the verbal behavior of
negotiators, (b) which particular verbal behaviors contribute to negotiators’ sense
of rapport, and (c) which particular verbal behaviors contribute to external judges’
evaluations of negotiators’ rapport.
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Bronstein et al.
1105
Table 4. Hierarchical Regression Coefficients of Negotiators’ Verbal Behaviors in Explaining
Variance in Judges’ Evaluations of Negotiators’ Rapport Characteristics (N ¼ 280)
Steps (b)
Variable
1
Behaviors related to the negotiation process
Negotiation facilitating acts
.31***
Negotiation facilitating reactions
.16**
Negotiation inhibiting acts
.26***
Negotiation inhibiting reactions
.25***
Behaviors related to the discourse process
Synchrony
Asynchrony
Behaviors related to the discourse content
Direct positive content
Indirect positive content
Direct negative content
Indirect negative content
Behaviors related to the relationship
Politeness
Positive interpersonal content
Negative interpersonal content
R2
.19***
R2 change
.19***
2
3
4
.30***
.15**
.22***
.21***
.30***
.17**
.19***
.18***
.30***
.16**
.19***
.18***
.13*
.26***
.14*
.26***
.13*
.26***
.01
.06
.01
.17**
.10
.05
.02
.17**
.39***
.09**
.00
.03
.00
.39***
.00
.30***
.11***
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
The Encoding of Rapport in Negotiators’ Verbal Behavior
Judges in this study were able to identify negotiators’ levels of rapport even though
they were exposed only to the transcribed verbal behaviors of participants.
The significant correlation we found between negotiators’ rapport levels and
rapport judgment supported the argument that rapport is, indeed, encoded in the
verbal channel. Moreover, we found this correlation to be higher than the correlation of the rapport levels of the interacting negotiators themselves. This is
in line with previous findings, where rapport feelings of interacting participants
were not highly correlated (e.g., Bernieri et al. 1996). However, the finding that
rapport is encoded in the verbal channel opposes previous studies that found that
rapport is encoded only in nonverbal behavior (Bernieri et al. 1996; Grahe and
Bernieri 1999).
We believe that the difference is due to the fact that in the past, there was a discrepancy between the interaction as experienced by the participants and content that
the judges were exposed to. The discrepancy was in two dimensions. The first is
interaction length—many past studies exposed judges to very short (30s to 50s) segments of the interaction (thin slices), while the participants were exposed to its
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Journal of Conflict Resolution 56(6)
Figure 1. The contribution of actor’s and partner’s verbal behaviors to felt rapport and
judged rapport
entirety. Beyond the discrepancy, short segments do not allow for real exposure to
the verbal channel (DePaulo 1992). The second dimension is exposure to nonverbal information. Previous studies compared participants engaged in face-toface communication with the evaluations of judges who were exposed only to
the verbal channel. In contrast, the present study compared participants and
judges exposed to more similar verbal clues—participants to each others’ spoken behavior, and judges to written transcriptions of the interactions thereof.
While not identical—participants were exposed to each other’s voices, including
intonations and vocal intensities, which judges were not—it is likely that the
behavioral clues to which both sides were exposed were more comparable,
bringing about more similar evaluations of rapport in the interaction. Futures
studies may more accurately assess the encoding of rapport in the verbal channel
by modulating similarity of exposure to verbal clues by judges and participants
(e.g., participants may carry out interactions in writing or judges may hear audio
recordings of spoken interactions).
This finding accords with research showing that relationship content can be
encoded even in means of communication that prohibit visual exposure, and that personal, emotional involvement is possible across a variety of different types of communication (for an overview, see Derks, Fischer, and Bos 2008).
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Bronstein et al.
1107
Contributions of Verbal Behaviors to Negotiators’ Sense of Rapport
Verbal behaviors differentially contributed to negotiators’ sense of rapport and to
external judges’ evaluations of negotiators’ rapport characteristics. The VeRAS tool
created for this study is the first tool to make such evaluations possible. Twelve of
the thirteen VeRAS behaviors contributed either to the sense of rapport felt by the
negotiator expressing that verbal behavior, the sense of rapport felt by the negotiator’s partner, or to external evaluation of the negotiator’s rapport characteristics. In
each case, the contribution was in the hypothesized direction. Nine of the twelve verbal behaviors contributed to the negotiating partner’s sense of rapport, and these nine
included all verbal behaviors related to the relationship domain. These findings support the definition of rapport as a variable related to the quality of relationships.
Indeed, as demonstrated in this study, even in brief (15 minute), onetime, instrumental interactions between strangers having no prior acquaintance with one another or
expectations for future relationship continuity, behaviors related to the relationship
carry great weight.
Likewise, each of the behaviors related to the negotiation process domain (agreement/disagreement, acceptance/nonacceptance, and the like) contributed to rapport.
This may be fixed in the character of the negotiation interaction employed in the
study: a focused interaction in which both sides had interests, agendas, and desired
outcomes. Possibly, participants’ feelings about the quality of the interaction were
strongly influenced by the extent to which they felt their partner understood their
interests and responded to them. In a more open, disinterested interaction such as
a friendly conversation, it is likely that behaviors related to the interaction context
would receive less emphasis.
In the content domain, we found that negotiators’ sense of rapport was strongly
diminished when partners express negative content, whether directly or indirectly,
but that positive content seemed to have little influence on rapport. A possible explanation may be found in Kanouse and Hanson’s (1971) ‘‘negativity effect’’, according
to which negative stimuli bear a stronger influence on appraisals than do positive or
neutral stimuli having similar intensity (Peeters and Czapinski 1990), including in
the case of verbal stimuli (Peeters 1989).
Nor, in the interaction process domain, did negotiators’ synchrony or asynchrony
contribute to partners’ feelings of rapport. This may reflect the normativity of
‘‘dugri’’ (straightforward), informal speech in Israeli culture, according to which
interactants may be less sensitive to interruption and inattentiveness than participants in North America, where most studies have been conducted (Katriel 1986).
Alternatively, according to Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal (1990), the kinds of
behaviors that foster rapport change throughout the stages of a relationship. In the
early stages of a relationship, before sides know each other well, partners expect little coordination and synchrony of each other. Thus, this domain may carry less
weight in determining participants’ sense of rapport. However, as acquaintanceship
continues, coordination increases in importance. It is possible that in longer
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Journal of Conflict Resolution 56(6)
negotiations than those allowed for in this study, the interaction process domain
would more greatly contribute to sense of rapport. An additional explanation to this
domain’s minor contribution may be that we have tested it only in the verbal channel. It may naturally be more difficult to define and test synchrony and asynchrony
verbally, compared with nonverbally. Further research is needed to clarify whether
the construction of these variables in the present study reduced their measured contribution to verbal rapport.
In addition to the abovementioned findings, we found that some verbal behaviors
contribute to rapport via the principle of reciprocity: behaviors that foster rapport,
such as affiliative content, are effective when expressed by both sides, but fall short
of nourishing rapport when expressed by one side alone. The reverse effect was seen
in behaviors that inhibit rapport: when both sides behaved negatively, rapport was
not effected, but when only one side expressed a negative behavior, the other party’s
sense of rapport was diminished. Several studies have shown that reciprocity significantly influences interactants’ behaviors and feelings (see, e.g., Falk and Fischbacher 2006; Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler 1986), even when the reciprocated
behavior makes no pragmatic contribution to participants’ goals. Thus, participants
who feel slighted—their goodwill insufficiently reciprocated by the other side—may
impose sanctions on their partner, even if those sanctions hurt themselves (Carpenter
and Matthews 2004; Fehr and Gächter 2000), while those who are reciprocated will
prefer to cooperate, even when competition would better serve their interests (Hoffman, McCabe, and Smith 1998). Findings of this study suggest that reciprocity in
positive behaviors contributes to negotiators’ sense of rapport, while nonreciprocity
in negative behaviors hinders rapport.
Contributions of Verbal Behaviors to External Judges’ Evaluations of Rapport
All behaviors related to the negotiation process domain contributed to judges’ evaluations of negotiators’ expressed rapport characteristics. Thus, these behaviors
influenced the evaluations of both negotiators and external judges. However, judges
who evaluated negotiators’ expressed rapport characteristics, unlike those negotiators’ partners, (1) were influenced by negotiators’ synchrony and (2) were not influenced by negotiators’ expressions of behaviors in the relationship domain. Possibly
judges, being external to the interaction, were less attuned to the intersubjective feelings experienced in the course of negotiation and placed greater emphasis on the
more pragmatic aspects of the negotiation and interaction process.
Importance of the Dyad
A significant theoretical characteristic of rapport is its definition as a dyadic variable, produced by synergy between participants in interaction. However, the vast
majority of studies of rapport have operationally measured this variable on one side
of an interaction alone, or as the average reported by both sides, without attending to
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Bronstein et al.
1109
the interdependence of partners’ rapport. The findings of this study, based on a
model of dependence between actors and partners, showed that behaviors and characteristics of the negotiators make the strongest contribution to rapport at the level of
the pair and not of the individual: most of the verbal behaviors were found to contribute to sense of rapport were behaviors expressed by negotiation partners and not
by the actors themselves; and of these behaviors, most contributions were seen in the
interaction between the behaviors of the two negotiators. That is, the level of the pair
and the unique combination of the two negotiators are more significant to their verbal behavior and sense of rapport than the personal qualities and verbal behavior of
each of the sides singly.
The importance of the dyad in negotiation contexts was emphasized by Elfenbein
et al. (2008), who examined the contributions of personal characteristics to the process and outcomes of negotiation in successive interactions:
The largest share of variance in SV [Subjective Value of the interaction] appeared at
the dyad level, representing the subjective experience resulting from the unique pairing
of negotiators. Thus, it appears that negotiators did not merely repeat the same interaction over and over with new partners on the basis of their stable traits alone but that
each interaction actually stands on its own. (p. 1472)
Importantly in Elfenbein et al.’s study, ‘‘dyad effects were greatest . . . for rapport’’
(p. 1472). Together, their and the present study, along with other studies which
treated the dyad as unit of analysis, emphasize the importance of addressing rapport
as a dyadic variable and employing a research methodology that treats rapport as
such.
Application, Limitations, and Directions for Future Research
The findings of the present study, which highlight the contributions of different verbal behaviors to feelings and evaluations of rapport, can practically contribute to
negotiators’ effectiveness, particularly in the verbal channel, leading to better objective and subjective outcomes. These may be uniquely relevant to organizations
whose operations rely heavily on verbal interaction, such as call centers and online
service providers, which invest great sums in training their employees to manage
customers and in systems to monitor customer communications. Likewise, quality
control mechanisms require supervisors—external judges—to evaluate the contributions of employees and customers to the quality of interaction outcomes. This study
may help judges determine the verbal behaviors relevant to rapport, and to recognize
that the behaviors that influence their evaluations may differ from those most influencing interactants.
The present study is explorative in that it is the first to broadly examine the contributions of verbal behaviors to sense of rapport in the context of negotiation. Being
so, and due to its engagement with one of the richest and most complex of human
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Journal of Conflict Resolution 56(6)
behaviors—language—it would be appropriate for future studies to assess diversified contexts such as social conversation, employment interviews, and the like. Such
studies would enable the identification of verbal behaviors and their differential contributions to rapport in varied contexts. The VeRAS tool can be employed as a generic instrument for assessing verbal rapport, since its development was based on
politeness theory, which addresses interactions in varied contexts and not only
negotiation.
Regarding rapport judgment—in this research, the same judges were employed
for both the interaction rapport judgments and the individual negotiators’ rapport
scale judgments. This might have caused redundancy, which created a dependency.
In future experiments, we suggest that different judges will rate interaction rapport
and individual rapport.
We also suggest that further studies address variables that might affect negotiators’ verbal behavior and feelings of rapport. For example, negotiator position (powerful vs. powerless) may affect the way people talk and create rapport, gender may
affect verbal behavior and rapport, and so on.
Likewise, continuing studies should integrate between the verbal and nonverbal
channels, aiming for a more complex reflection of the behavioral factors that influence rapport. In most interactions, verbal and nonverbal behaviors are interwoven:
when people speak they also change their posture, express different gestures, move
their hands and eyes, and so on. This would accord with an emerging research direction that emphasizes integration of the verbal and nonverbal channels in understanding the transmission of messages between interactants (Jones and LaBaron 2002;
Walther, Loh, and Granka 2005).
The present study integrated between different fields of social behavior, negotiation, and pragmatics, employing one knowledge field in order to shed light on others
(Mikulincer and Shaver 2001; Smith, Murphy, and Coats 1999). This approach
enabled us to better understand the dynamics at play in the verbal channel. Studies
show that as communications media operating only on verbal channels have become
more widespread, the capability of integrating emotional and personal involvement
during an interaction, including in negotiation, has increased (Derks, Fischer, and
Bos 2008; Drolet and Morris 2000). The findings of the present study support this
potential. While communications media exhibit rapid generational changeover, and
although transmissions of verbal-only messages like twitters and instant messages
become ever faster, shorter, and denser in pace, rapport is likely to persist as an
enduring ideal for communication between human beings.
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Acts facilitating rapport
Responses facilitating rapport
Acts inhibiting rapport
Responses inhibiting rapport
Synchrony
Asynchrony
Direct positive content
Indirect positive content
Direct negative content
Indirect negative content
Politeness
Affiliative content
Distancing content
Negotiator’s felt rapport
Negotiator’s partner felt rapport
Rapport evaluation by external judge
*p < .05. ** p < .01. ***p < .001.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Variable
2
0.05
.22**
.26**
.12*
0.01
0.08
.25**
.14*
0.06
.19**
.14*
.14*
.15*
.14*
1
0.09
.16**
0.01
.19**
0.01
0.06
0.07
.18**
0.02
0.01
0.01
.19**
0.1
0.01
.25***
0.04
0.11
0.02
0.02
0.04
0.08
.12*
.16**
0.01
0.02
0
0.04
.20***
3
.13*
.14*
0.06
0.08
.32**
.17**
0.01
0.05
.24**
.16*
0.09
.23***
4
0.09
0.1
0.08
0.04
0.01
0.03
0.06
0.07
16*
.17*
.17**
5
0.03
.13*
0.08
0.12
0.08
0.07
0.03
0.01
0.04
.28***
6
.25**
.16**
.17**
0.03
0.04
0.11
.14*
0.02
0
7
0.03
0.01
0.06
0.1
.25**
0.02
0.04
0.06
8
.19**
0.07
.17**
.19**
0.1
.17*
0.09
9
0.01
0.04
.25**
0.09
0.04
.22***
10
–
0.04
0.11
0.03
0.08
.13*
11
–
0.09
0.09
0.08
0.06
12
–
0.03
0.04
0.08
13
–
0.2*
0.22*
14
–
.32***
15
–
16
Spearman Correlations between Verbal Variables While Negotiating, Negotiators’ Feelings of Rapport, and Evaluations of
Negotiators’ Rapport Characteristics by External Judges
Appendix
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Journal of Conflict Resolution 56(6)
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
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