Dr. Johann Majer

Werdgang

10/2022

University of Hildesheim, Institute of Psychology, Department of Social, Organizational, and Economic Psychology, Hildesheim, Germany – Postdoctoral Researcher (DFG – Principal Investigator, 2021-2024)

04/2022 – 09/2022

University of Bremen, Institute of Psychology, Professor of Social, Organizational, and Economic Psychology (Interim Professor), Bremen, Germany.

04/2021 – 03/2022

Leuphana University, Faculty of Sustainability, Department of Social and Political Psychology, Lüneburg, Germany – Postdoctoral Researcher (DFG – Principal Investigator, 2021-2024)

11/2017 – 03/2021

Leuphana University, Department of Social, Organizational, and Political Psychology / Department of Sustainability Education, Lüneburg, Germany – Postdoctoral Researcher and Program Coordinator

03/2016 – 06/2016

Columbia University, Graduate School of Business, Management Division, NYC, USA – Visiting Researcher; German Academic Exchange Service grant (DAAD)

04/2013 – 10/2017

Leuphana University, Department of Social, Organizational, and Political Psychology, Lüneburg, Germany – PhD Candidate

11/2012 – 01/2013

University of Trier, Germany, Department of Social Psychology – Teaching and Research Assistant

02/2012 – 10/2012

Institute for Labor Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU), Trier, Germany – Research Assistant

08/2010 – 11/2010

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Research Group Intuitive Experts, Bonn, Germany – Research Intern

Publikationen - Artikel

  • Formanski, F.J., Pein, M.M., Loschelder, D.D., Engler, J.-O., Husen, O., & Majer, J. M. (2022). Tipping points ahead? How laypeople respond to linear versus nonlinear climate change predictions. Climatic Change 175, 8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03459-z.
  • Feuss, S., Fischer-Kreer, D., Majer, J. M., Kemper, J., & Brettel, M. (2022). The interplay of eco-labels and price cues: Empirical evidence from a large-scale field experiment in an online fashion store. Journal of Cleaner Production, 37, 133707, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.133707.
  • Majer, J. M., & Trötschel, R. (2022). Negotiating sustainability transitions: Why does it matter? What are the Challenges? How to proceed? Sustainability, 14(14), 8691, https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148691.
  • Majer, J. M., Henscher, H., Reuber, P., Fischer-Kreer, D., & Fischer, D. (2022). The effects of visual sustainability labels on consumer perception and behavior: A systematic review of the empirical literature. Sustainable Production and Consumption, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2022.06.012
  • Majer, J. M., Schweinsberg, M., Zhang, H. & Trötschel, R. (2022). Conflict strength: Measuring the tension between cooperative and competitive incentives in experimental negotiation tasks. Collabra: Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.35330
  • Trötschel, R., Van Treek, M., Heydenbluth, C., Zhang, K., & Majer, J. M. (2022). From claiming to creating value: The psychology of negotiations on common resource dilemmas. Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095257.
  • Majer, J. M., Höhne, B. P., Zhang, H., Zhang, K., & Trötschel, R. (2022). Give and take frames in shared resource negotiations. Journal of Economic Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2022.102492.
  • Warsitzka, M., Zhang, H., Loschelder, D. D., Majer, J. M., Trötschel, R. (2022). How cognitive issue bracketing affects interdependent decision-making in negotiations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104268.
  • Majer, J. M., Barth, M., Zhang, H., Van Treek, M. & Trötschel, R. (2021). Resolving conflicts between people and over time in the transformation toward sustainability: A framework of interdependent conflicts. Frontiers in Psychology – Environmental Psychology, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.623757.
  • Schuster, C., Majer, J. M., & Trötschel, R. (2020). Whatever we negotiate is not what I like: How value-driven conflicts impact negotiation behaviors, outcomes, and subjective evaluations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103993.
  • Majer, J. M., Trötschel, R., Galinsky, A. D., & Loschelder, D. D. (2020). Open to offers, but resisting requests: How the framing of anchors affects motivation and negotiated outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000210.
  • Majer, J. M., Loschelder, D.D., Windolph, L., & Fischer, D. (2018). How sustainability-related challenges can fuel conflict between organizations and external stakeholders: A social psychological perspective to master value differences, time horizons, and resource allocations. Umweltpsychologie, 22(2), 53-70, ISSN: 1434-3304.
  • Trötschel, R., Loschelder, D. D., Höhne, B. P., & Majer, J. M. (2015). Procedural frames in negotiations: How offering my resources versus requesting yours impacts perception, behavior, and outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(3), 417-435. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000009.
  • Trötschel, R., Loschelder, D. D., Höhne, B. P., Majer, J. M., & Peifer, C. (2014). Monetary negotiations: The salience of money at the bargaining table. InMind Magazine, 4, ISSN: 1877-5349. https://de.in-mind.org/article/um-geld-verhandelt-die-welt-die-macht-des-monetaeren-in-verhandlungen

Publikationenen - Bücher

  • Van Treek, M., Majer, J. M., & Trötschel R. (2021). Our decisions linger longer than we do: Failures to negotiate on behalf of future generations. BfN-Scripts. Federal Agency of Nature Conservation (Bundesamt für Naturschutz).
  • Höhne, B., Loschelder, D. D., Gutenbrunner, L., Majer, J. M., & Trötschel, R. (2016). Workplace mediation: Lessons from negotiation theory. In K. Bollen, M. Euwema, & L. Munduate (Eds.). Advancing workplace mediation through integration of theory and practice. Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg.
  • Trötschel, R., Loschelder, D. D., Höhne, B., & Majer, J. M. (2016). Procedural frames in negotiation: The impact of offering "my resources" vs. requesting "your resources". Keller Center Research Report (KCRR), 9(1), 17-22
  • Trötschel, R., Majer, J. M., & Höhne, B. P. (2015). Verhandlungsforschung als Grundlage einer Mediationstheorie. In Haft, F. & Schlieffen, K. (Eds.) Handbuch Mediation (3rd Ed.). C. H. Beck.
  • Trötschel, R., Höhne B. P., Majer, J. M., Loschelder, D.D., Deller, J., & Frey, D. (2014). Verhandeln. In Frey, D. & Bierhoff, H.W. (Eds.) Enzyklopädie der Psychologie: Kommunikation, Interaktion und soziale Gruppenprozesse. (Band 3, S. 803-846). Göttingen: Hogrefe Verlag.

Forschungsprojekte

The Interplay of Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Conflicts as a Barrier to Sustainable Solutions

Project Description

Many important social issues of our times involve conflicts of interests that require joint decision making between conflicting parties via negotiations. Over the past five decades, negotiation research has made a constant effort to explore psychological processes that impact conflict resolution on the social level. However, overlooked by most negotiation research is the fact that many conflicts do not only involve divergent interests across parties but also involve divergent interests across time. That is, parties may not only perceive a conflict of interests between their own and their counterparts’ interests (i.e., interpersonal conflict), but also between their own interests in the present and their own interests in the future (i.e., intrapersonal conflict). Such intrapersonal conflicts have been intensely studied in decision-making research, yet, hardly ever considered in negotiation research. The superordinate goal of the present research project is to integrate both lines of research and to investigate the interplay of interdependent psychological conflicts on the social (i.e., interpersonal conflict) and the temporal (i.e., intrapersonal conflict) dimension. Building on both lines of research, I propose that the interplay of interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts is particularly difficult to resolve when such conflicts are interdependent: Parties do not only have to coordinate their own interests with their counterpart’s interests, but also have to reconcile their present and future interests simultaneously. Mutually satisfying and sustainable conflict solutions can only be reached when parties consider their conflicting interests on the social and temporal level in a comprehensive way. Based on prior decision-making and negotiation research, I develop a theoretical framework of interdependent conflicts that begins with the premise that parties resolve interdependent conflicts in a prioritized rather than a comprehensive, unbiased way. Referring to the psychological mechanisms of social devaluation, temporal discounting, and perceived autonomy in decision making, I predict that parties will give first priority to the solution of ongoing social conflicts (i.e., present interpersonal conflicts), second priority to the solution of conflicts between present and future interests (i.e., intrapersonal conflicts), and third priority to the solution of future social conflicts (i.e., future interpersonal conflicts). By investigating the interplay of social and temporal conflicts, the present research seeks to understand unexplored barriers to sustainable conflict resolution and to introduce them to social psychology in general and to negotiation research in particular.

 

Conflict Strength

Johann Majer, Martin Schweinsberg, Hong Zhang, & Roman Trötschel

In this project, we propose the conflict strength coefficient: a continuous, objective, and practical measure of the incentive structure of multi-issue negotiation tasks.

 

We calculated the conflict strength coefficient for 68 of the most influential negotiation tasks. Our analyses show that conflict strength coefficients are more heterogeneously distributed across subfields of the negotiations literature (Figure 5 and Table 1 in the paper) than the binary conceptualization of negotiations as distributive or integrative falsely suggests. Our findings can help scholars exert more experimental control, improve theory building and testing, better match real-world phenomena with structurally equivalent incentive structures, and facilitate research transparency.

 

Conflict strength provides novel insights into the previously hidden, but central element of the negotiation literature: the objective conflict structure. The objective conflict structure is fundamentally important to understand how negotiators subjectively construe the interactions, how they behave, and which kinds of outcomes they obtain.

 

For more information on this project please visit our website: www.conflictstrength.com