Fantine Xiao

This project studies whether opportunities to communicate a trustor's emotions affect their trust behavior in a modified trust game. I also investigate whether the impact of emotional communication varies by valence (positive or negative) and by the flexibility of emotional communication (restricted to sending one valence or free to choose between two valences). In an online experiment with 400 participants, I elicit trustors' decisions to trust, ambiguity attitudes, and beliefs using the belief hedge method. The results suggest that access to emotional communication has limited average effects on trust, while participants expect higher returns from the partner than under no communication. Greater flexibility in emotional communication leads to greater ambiguity insensitivity.

Emotional expressions in negotiation, such as anger expressions, can influence strategic behavior, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This paper develops a structural behavioral framework and uses an online experiment (N = 800) with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design varying the counterpart's anger expression and gender. We find that anger expressions have no significant overall effect on final offers because they reduce altruism while increasing beliefs about the counterpart's reservation price, with these two channels largely offsetting each other. Anger expressions also reduce perceived social ambiguity, especially when expressed by male counterparts, suggesting that male anger expressions are perceived as more diagnostic signals in negotiation.