CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

4. CONFLICT AND GROUP DECISION MAKING: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MOTIVATION 119
group as a whole or predominantly focus on their own interests and outcomes.
These social motives have been demonstrated to have a critical
influence on the way in which conflicts are managed in groups (cf., De
Dreu et al., 2000; Deutsch, 1973; Tjosvold, 1998). Before discussing these
effects of social motivation in detail, we will first discuss the diverse
sources of social motives in teams by looking at how several team input
variables relate to the social motivation of team members.
Individual Differences
Several dispositional variables have been found to affect individuals’
prosocial and proself orientations. Dispositional concern with future
consequences (Messick & Brewer, 1983) as well as individuals’ tendency
to trust (Yamagishi & Sato, 1986) has been shown to make people more
inclined to adopt a prosocial motive. On the other hand, Machiavellianism,
a person’s tendency to deceive and manipulate others for personal gain
(Christie & Geis, 1970), has been shown to be related to adopting a proself
motivation.
Much research has concentrated on social value orientation (McClintock,
1972), a stable individual difference variable. In this approach, individuals’
tendencies to make either prosocial or proself choices are measured using
so-called decomposed games. An individual is confronted with a number
of choices between distributions of resources for him- or herself and an
unknown other that reflect a more prosocial or a more proself oriented
motivation. Differences in social value orientation, as established with
this measure, have been found to be a strong predictor of behaviors in a
variety of contexts, such as making cooperative versus egoistic choices in
social dilemma games (Van Lange & Kuhlman, 1994), commuting to work
by car (a proself choice) or by public transport (a more prosocial choice;
Van Lange, Van Vugt, Meertens, & Ruiter, 1998), donating to public goods
(Van Lange, 1999), and self-sacrifice in relationships (Van Lange, Agnew,
Harinck, & Steemers, 1997; for reviews, see Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Rusbult
& Van Lange, 1996).
Van Lange, Otten, De Bruin, and Joireman (1997) were interested in
where social value orientations originate. They found that, compared
with people with a proself orientation, prosocials exhibited greater levels
of secure attachment and grew up with more sisters. According to Van
Lange, Otten, et al. (1997), this indicated that the development of different
social value orientations was at least partially rooted in different patterns
of social interaction in early childhood and young adulthood. Furthermore,
they found that the prevalence of prosocials increases from early
adulthood to middle adulthood and old age, whereas the prevalence of
proselfs decreases. Because Van Lange, Otten, et al. employed a cross-sectional
research design, they could not infer whether this effect was due
to cohort differences, selective mortality in the group of proselfs, or the