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Marlone D. Henderson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

VITAE Email: hendersonm@psy.utexas.edu Phone: 471-6447 Office: SEA 4.224 See also Social and Personality

Background

Marlone D. Henderson received his B.S. from Michigan State University in 1999, Ph.D. from New York University in 2006, joined the faculty at University of Chicago in 2006 before arriving at UT in 2008.

Topics of Special Interest to Marlone Henderson:

• Negotiation
• Social Judgments

Negotiation:

One of the main procedures used to deal with social disagreement or differences is open communication, frequently referred to as negotiation. Negotiation is necessary whenever people have different interests and opinions on how to distribute some resource or carry out some action, and there are no fixed or established rules or procedures to resolve those differences and whenever people want to search for agreement without resorting to aggression or open fighting. Negotiation occurs in business and academic settings and in informal social interactions such as deciding with a friend or significant other where to dine or vacation. Clearly, negotiation is essential for anyone who must interact with other people to accomplish their goals. Professor Henderson is broadly interested in what impact increased psychological distance has on the entire process and outcome of negotiation. For example, when labor negotiates with management, is it better to negotiate with someone that you think is geographically close by or far away? Professor Henderson assumes that from a distant perspective, people think about events in a more abstract manner, whereas from a near perspective people think about events in a more concrete, detail-oriented manner. So, you might be asking, "What does abstract or concrete thinking mean exactly?" The content of more abstract thoughts consist of the perceived essence, gist, or summary of the given information about events (i.e., a general description of something), whereas the content of more concrete thoughts consist of the situation-dependent, readily observable features of events (i.e., a specific description of something). For example, when labor negotiates with management, they might abstractly think about the issues that matter to them (e.g., health coverage, salary, vacation time, sick leave, grievance procedures) as "ways to support a family" rather than on the specific options available to them (e.g., full-health care vs. partial health care). Professor Henderson's current work specifically examines the consequences of psychological distance and abstraction on people's willingness to cooperate and compromise.

See one of the papers below to get a flavor for this research:

Henderson, M.D., Trope, Y., & Carnevale, P.J. (2006). Negotiation from a near and distant time perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 712-729.

Henderson, M.D., & Trope, Y. (in press). The effects of abstraction on integrative agreements: When seeing the forest helps avoid getting tangled in the trees. Social Cognition Special Issue

Social Judgments:

Making sound and accurate decisions is vital to the well-being of individuals and social groups. People are frequently in the position of trying to explain why other people perform certain actions (Did he bump me because he's a jerk or because he's in a hurry?) and predict how people will behave in the future (If my husband has a history of cheating but has recently showed signs of being faithful, has he really made a permanent change for the better?). Often times, people have to make such judgments about people who are quite psychologically far away from them (Why is that group in Africa killing people?; Why is my long-distance girlfriend not returning my calls?; Why are those politicians in Iraq having so much trouble forming a government?). Professor Henderson is broadly interested in what impact psychological distance has on people's social judgments. Much of his work has been aimed at examining the consequences of geographical (spatial) distance on people's social judgments.

See one of the papers below to get a flavor for this research:

Henderson, M.D., Fujita, K., Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2006). Transcending the “here”: The effect of spatial distance on social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,91, 845-856.

Fujita, K., Henderson, M.D., Eng, J., Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2006). Spatial distance and mental construal of social events. Psychological Science, 17, 278-282.

Professor Henderson is currently exploring exciting new directions in each of the topic areas mentioned above, and if you are interested in learning more, receiving a copy of one his papers, collaborating, or working in his lab, feel free to contact him.