Ellen Giebels

From a clinical and social psychological perspective, this exploratory study aims at relating the hostage experience to hostage negotiation strategies. Therefore, we conducted 11 semi‐structured and in‐depth interviews with victims of two types of hostage‐taking: sieges and kidnappings. The results showed that all hostages reported feelings of helplessness. Additionally, feelings of uncertainty and isolation were particularly strong for victims of kidnapping, while this was not the case for victims of sieges. Furthermore, our analyses suggest that prudence is called for labeling the positive bond that is likely to develop between hostages and their captors as some sort of psychological artifact. We conclude with some general guidelines for estimating and promoting the psychological well‐being of hostages during their captivity. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In two negotiation experiments with business students we examined effects of the two-sided availability of alternative negotiators in combination with the parties’ social motive. Contrary to our expectation, prosocial negotiators rather than egoistic negotiators were sensitive to the presence of alternative partners. While egoistic negotiators were relatively unaffected by mutual exit options, prosocials engaged in less problem solving and reached lower joint outcomes when having two-sided instead of no exit options. Low interpersonal trust was identified as being responsible for these effects. These findings add to theory and practice on alternatives and social motives in negotiation.