Negotiation, communication, and decision strategies used by hostage/crisis negotiators

While dealing with hostage takers, hostage/crisis negotiators use either a negotiation process or police rescue team intervention. Negotiators use negotiation as a primary technique or as a part of the overall strategy depending on the factors affecting and constructing hostage negotiation resolutions. Negotiators usually look at the behavioral, criminal, and psychological distinctiveness of the hostage takers involved in the situations to decide whether they should be handled as instrumental or expressive. Looking at the negotiation process from the interactive and communicative perspective also helps the negotiators determine what kind of dynamic activities, communication skills and negotiation tools should be used while responding to hostage situations. By doing this, the negotiators build trust and rapport with the hostage takers, enabling the negotiators to gather greater quantities of useful information about the hostage takers and thereby are able to determine the appropriate negotiation, communication, and decision strategies.;By conducting this theory-based empirical study, gathering data from working negotiators in the US and Canada, I have determined what primary dynamic activities, communication skills, and negotiation tools are used by hostage/crisis negotiators. I have determined that negotiators implement their negotiation and decision strategies differently depending on whether the situations they deal with are instrumental or expressive. I have determined which elements of negotiations and factors affecting negotiations differ while handling instrumental and expressive hostage situations. I found that the collected data did not reveal any significant relationship between handling instrumental/expressive hostage situations differently and belief in the elements of Brenda Dervin's and Shannon-Weaver's theories. I have also determined that the belief in the elements of the Dervin's and Shannon-Weaver's theories is workable and practical for negotiators to use.;Based on the above findings, the model suggested by this research adds the elements and directives of Dervin's and Shannon-Weaver's models to the common approach used by the negotiators. This revised model suggests that the negotiators pay attention to the dynamics of the interactions presented between the two parties: the negotiators themselves and hostage takers. The revised model also recommends that the negotiators focus on not only the hostage takers behavioral characteristics, psychological conditions, and criminal history but also on the meaning of the sent message and the interaction itself as performed between the two parties. This perspective enables the negotiators to look at the negotiation process as information and communication process. We are not ignoring the fact that hostage negotiation is a format of extreme information management. By looking at such an extreme case, we can add to our understanding of Dervin's and Shannon-Weaver's perspectives in order to see the hostage negotiation process from a wider perspective.;The revised model is not an alternative approach to the common approach most negotiators use. Instead, the revised model uses the perspective and directives of the common approach and extends its meaning and content by also focusing on Dervin's sense making theory and Shannon-Weaver's communication model perspectives. The use of the perspective of this revised model is one more tool for the negotiators to use in order to promote new ways of looking at hostage negotiation resolutions.