THE NARROWNESS OF CURRENT LABORATORY PARADIGMS
In my experience, the biggest problem with laboratory research on social conflict is not its lack of external validity but the narrowness of current laboratory paradigms - the limited set of manipulations, tasks, and measures now available for studying conflict.
This narrowness leaves many questions unasked and fails to explore countless mechanisms that exist in real life. Most of these questions and mechanisms could be examined in the laboratory, but researchers seldom do so because they rely too much on techniques that were used in the past.A case in point is the dominant tradition of laboratory research on negotiation (Gelfand and Brett, 2004; Neale and Bazerman, 1991; Thompson, 2006). This research has focused for about 50 years on direct interaction between negotiators who are trying to reach a singular agreement. Yet that is only one corner of the entire negotiation process. We know from writers who use case materials (for example, Druckman, 1986; Hampson, 1996; Pruitt, 2005b; Zartman and Berman, 1982) that negotiation is a much more complex affair. Complex circumstances determine whether parties are willing to go into negotiation. Pre-negotiation preparations - which may involve direct meetings between the parties or communication through chains of intermediaries - are often more extensive than the actual negotiation itself. Intermediaries often continue to be active during formal negotiation, along with secret side-bar talks between the parties, and such events may be at the heart of the action. When negotiations are between nations or other organizations, complex communication processes within each side precede the development of positions and concessions. Negotiated agreements often have a multi-level feature, starting with a broad statement of agreed principles and ending, sometimes years later, with a detailed plan for the implementation of these principles. The post-negotiation period, in which agreements can succeed or fail, is another critical phase of the negotiation process. Laboratory researchers have almost totally ignored these important issues because they are still grinding in the same methodological groove.
What this means is that the challenge for laboratory research on social conflict is to build new experimental paradigms that capture a broader set of processes than those currently under study.