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This study aims to examine the effects of ethnic and social identities on negotiation decision making in the context of the Cyprus conflict.

The author conducts a theory‐driven case study of the 1959 Zurich‐London agreements on Cyprus, analyzing the positions of Turkey, Greece, Britain, and the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities during the negotiation process. The analytical method is the applied decision analysis procedure.

The analysis of the Zurich‐London negotiations over Cyprus suggests that even in the presence of adversarial ethnic ties, decision makers who have a shared (and salient) social identity are more likely to employ collective‐serving decision strategies and seek even‐handed solutions that will not jeopardize their mutual interests. Here, Turkey and Greece – both NATO members – decided to settle on a commonly agreed negotiation outcome despite their ethnicity‐driven, clashing interests over Cyprus. In contrast, decision makers with severe ethnic fragmentation with no shared social identity (as with the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities) are more prone to employ self‐serving decision strategies and seek zero‐sum negotiation outcomes that will exclusively benefit them.

Regarding the applied decision analysis procedure employed in this study, it is necessary to acknowledge the subjective nature of the construction of the decision matrices with respective values/ratings, even though such procedure is based on empirical and situational evidence.

The study introduces a novel theoretical and analytical framework to the literature on negotiation decision making in identity‐based conflicts by combining the social contextualist perspective with the polyheuristic decision model and using applied decision analysis. By anchoring the analysis in the historical context of the Cyprus conflict, the study also contributes to the relatively underdeveloped literature on conflict management in the Middle East.

This study aims to explore the effects of political information and anger on the public's cognitive processing and foreign policy preferences concerning third‐party interventions in ethnic conflict.

The study employs an experimental design, wherein the authors manipulate policy‐specific information by generating ad hoc political information related to ethnic conflict. The statistical methods of analysis are logistic regression and analysis of covariance.

The results demonstrate that both political information and anger have a significant impact on an individual's cognitive processing and policy preferences regarding ethnic conflict interventions. Specifically, political information increases one's proclivity to choose non‐military policy options, whereas anger instigates support for aggressive policies. Both factors result in faster decision making with lower amounts of information accessed. However, the interaction of political information and anger is not significant. The study also finds that policy‐specific information – rather than general political information – influences the public's policy preferences.

This study confronts and advances the debate over whether political information is significant in influencing the public's foreign policy preferences and, if so, whether such an effect is the product of general or domain‐specific information. It also addresses an under‐studied topic – the emotive repercussions of ethnic conflicts among potential third‐party interveners. In addition, it tackles the argument over whether political information immunizes people against (or sensitizes them to) the effects of anger on their cognitive processing and foreign policy preferences. The study also introduces a novel approach for examining political information through an experimental manipulation of policy‐specific information.