CONFLICT EQUILIBRIUM PREFERENCE RANKING OF MULTIPLE DECISION MAKERS BASED ON CONFLICT RESOLUTION GRAPH MODEL AND EMOTION REGULATION
Authors: Zhao Jinshuai , Yang Baohua 
Published: July 2022

Background

Conflicts are inherent to all groups and organizations, and most conflicts are resolved through mediation or negotiation. In conflict negotiation, predicting the preference information of opponents is of great significance to solve conflict problems and reduce negotiation costs. The key condition is that one obtains the preferences of other decision makers from cognitive psychology in order to take the initiative in conflict negotiation with multiple decision makers (DMS). In other words, the most important thing in conflict is to identify the intentions and preferences of other discourse markers from the perspective of psychological cognition. Mastering the preference ranking of opponents may lead to some results of conflict, which can help decision makers calmly face the tension in the process of conflict and predict the next strategy more accurately. For decision makers, how to adjust their emotions in the negotiation is particularly important.

Research objects and methods

Under the framework of conflict resolution graph model (GMCR) of cognitive psychology, a method to obtain DM preference in multiple DM conflicts is constructed. Through reverse thinking, this method establishes three mathematical models: Nash, generalized sub rationality and sequence stability. These mathematical models can be used to obtain the minimum constraints of DM with unknown preferences. Achieving balance in conflict requires minimal constraints. This method allows other decision makers to obtain the preference ranking of their opponents on the premise that the conflict results are known. In turn, these preference rankings can balance known results. This study also used the questionnaire method to investigate the emotional micro behavior of each group in the negotiation process. This scale is used to measure the relationship between three independent variables: self accommodation, accommodation of others and the feeling of the degree to which others accommodate themselves. It includes 20 statements, with responses ranging from “almost always” (score 1) to “almost none” (score 5), with a total score between 20 (lowest accommodation) and 100 (highest accommodation).

Results

The method was applied to the conflict analysis of water pollution in Lanzhou. There are three reasons for this conflict: Lanzhou Veolia Water Company, Sinopec Lanzhou branch and the local government. Firstly, the GMCR model of the above conflict is established. Then, the preferences of Lanzhou Veolia Water Company and Sinopec Lanzhou branch are analyzed. Finally, using the above mathematical model, they can obtain the preference ranking of their opponents - local governments, which makes them invincible in conflict negotiations. In addition, the theoretical results are consistent with the actual conflict situation. At the same time, the feasibility and effectiveness of this method are verified. The results showed that the scores of the four dimensions of emotion regulation in the first two groups were less than 2 points, and the difference was not statistically significant (P &gt; 0.05). After 8 weeks of emotion regulation intervention, the average scores of initiative, negotiation psychological mastery, tension evaluation and conflict attitude in the intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P &lt; 0.01).

Conclusion

The main contribution of this paper is to establish a mathematical model, which can be used to obtain the preference ranking of DM for ideal equilibrium. When obtaining the preference ranking of the main decision-makers, the mediator can guide the strategy choice of each decision-maker in the conflict and control the final result of the conflict. The results of this study provide a new and valuable perspective for conflict negotiation of multi discourse markers from the perspective of psychological cognition. This work can be extended to relative preferences or partially known preferences, because some DM preference information may be partially obtained. To sum up, through the comparative study of decision-makers' emotional behavior, this study found that emotional regulation can improve decision-makers' emotions in the negotiation process, not only solve conflicts more calmly, but also enable decision-makers to face difficulties and setbacks rationally, which is worthy of promotion.

Acknowledgements

Supported by projects grant from Jiangsu Normal University (Grant No.19XSRX001), Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (Grant No.2019SJA0922), and Humanities and Social Sciences Fund Planning Project of the Ministry of Education (Grant No. 18YJA630128).