Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask

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Abstract

Four experiments show that gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations may be explained by differential treatment of men and women when they attempt to negotiate. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants evaluated written accounts of candidates who did or did not initiate negotiations for higher compensation. Evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations. In Experiment 3, participants evaluated videotapes of candidates who accepted compensation offers or initiated negotiations. Male evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations; female evaluators penalized all candidates for initiating negotiations. Perceptions of niceness and demandingness explained resistance to female negotiators. In Experiment 4, participants adopted the candidate’s perspective and assessed whether to initiate negotiations in same scenario used in Experiment 3. With male evaluators, women were less inclined than men to negotiate, and nervousness explained this effect. There was no gender difference when evaluator was female.

Introduction

“There is no form of human excellence before which we bow with profounder deference than that which appears in a delicate woman…and there is no deformity in human character from which we turn with deeper loathing than from a woman forgetful of her nature, and clamorous for the vocation and rights of men.” Bledsoe (1856, p. 224)1

Research on corporate managers suggests that women are less likely than men to use negotiation in upward influence attempts (Lauterbach & Weiner, 1996). Other studies of broader populations indicate that women are less likely than men, in general, to initiate negotiations (Babcock et al., 2006, Babcock and Laschever, 2003). Women report greater anxiety than men about negotiating and are less likely than men to perceive situations as negotiable (Babcock et al., 2006).

Conventional wisdom (e.g., “it pays to ask” and “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”) suggests that, if women want the same resources and opportunities as men, then they should learn to seek out, rather than shy away from, opportunities to negotiate. For instance, one study of the job negotiations of graduating professional school students found that only 7% of female students attempted to negotiate their initial compensation offers as compared to 57% of men. Those who negotiated gained on average 7.4% over their initial offers (Babcock & Laschever, 2003). Even small differences in starting salaries can lead to substantial compensation gaps over time (Bowles et al., 2005, Gerhart and Rynes, 1991). Women’s reluctance as compared to men to initiate negotiations may be an important and under-explored explanation for the asymmetric distribution of resources, such as compensation, within organizations.

So, why would women let such opportunities pass? Maybe women need more training and practice in negotiation to help them get over their nervous feelings and to learn how to act more like the men when opportunities to negotiate arise. But, what if women’s relative hesitation about initiating negotiations has less to do with their negotiating ability than with the way they are treated when they attempt to negotiate? “Fix the women” solutions to gender issues often fail to take into consideration the gendered social context out of which gender differences in behavior emerge (Deaux and Major, 1987, Ely and Meyerson, 2000, Wade, 2001, Watson, 1994b).

Society rewards and reinforces different types of behavior for men and women (Eagly, 1987), and it is not always good advice for women to act more like men in order to claim the same resources and privileges. Research on feminine modesty, for instance, shows that women tend to present themselves more modestly than do men (Daubman et al., 1992, Gould and Slone, 1982, Heatherington et al., 1993), and that a modest self-presentation style tends to undermine perceived competence, particularly as compared to those who self-promote in a stereotypically masculine way (Rudman, 1998). However, if women attempt to overcome this “deficiency” by behaving in a more masculine self-promoting manner, they are perceived as technically skilled but lacking in social competence. This lack of social competence then detracts from their perceived hireability (Rudman, 1998). Similarly, research on gender and leadership has found that female leaders who attempt to establish their authority in a traditionally masculine (e.g., authoritative or directive) manner are evaluated more harshly than their male peers (Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992). Perhaps in response to this resistance, women have tended to develop a more participative leadership style, which is correspondent with prescriptive gender roles for women (Eagly & Johnson, 1990) and more effective for them than traditionally male leadership styles (Eagly et al., 2003, Eagly et al., 1995).

The current research explores the question of whether gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations may be explained by differential treatment of men and women when they attempt to negotiate.2 We examine whether women encounter more social resistance than do men when they attempt to negotiate for higher compensation and whether the gender of the evaluator moderates that resistance. We investigate further whether women are less inclined than men to initiate compensation negotiations under those circumstances in which they are more likely than men to encounter social resistance. In this way, we are able to illuminate how differential treatment of male and female negotiators may motivate gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations over resources, such as compensation.

We focus on compensation negotiations, specifically, because of their important economic implications and because they represent a domain in which gender differences in negotiated outcomes are well-documented (Barron, 2003, Bowles et al., 2005, Brett and Stroh, 1997, Gerhart and Rynes, 1991, Stevens et al., 1993). Recent developments in the study of gender in negotiation have made clear that gender effects in negotiation are situational (Bowles et al., 2005, Kray et al., 2002, Kray et al., 2004, Kray et al., 2001, Stuhlmacher and Walters, 1999, Walters et al., 1998). By focusing narrowly on compensation negotiations, we intend from the outset to limit the potential for generalization of our results in terms of negotiating contexts. That is to say, we would not expect women to encounter more social resistance than men across all types of potential negotiating contexts, nor would we expect women always to be more reluctant than men to negotiate. However, by demonstrating that women are more reluctant than men to negotiate in a context in which they face a greater social cost from doing so, we aim to illuminate the broader phenomenon that gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations may be motivated by social incentives as opposed to individual differences.

Section snippets

Initiation of compensation negotiations as a status violation

Prescriptive sex stereotypes stem from men’s higher status as compared to women within society (Conway et al., 1996, Eagly and Steffen, 1984, Hoffman and Hurst, 1990, Jackman, 1994, Meeker and Weitzel-O’Neill, 1977, Ridgeway and Bourg, 2004). Societies with more gender equity tend to espouse less sexist beliefs (Glick et al., 2000). Within the U.S., as the proportion of women in the workplace has grown and the gender segregation of occupations has declined, women have come to identify more with

Experiment 1

In Experiment 1, we conducted a preliminary test of Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 3 in a 2 (gender of candidate) × 2 (initiate negotiations: no ask vs. ask) × 2 (gender of evaluator) between-subjects design. Participants evaluated a job candidate based on a resume and interview notes. The interview notes indicated whether the candidate was male or female and whether (or not) the candidate had attempted to negotiate for extra compensation and job benefits.

Experiment 2

In Experiment 2, we tested Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2a, Hypothesis 2b, Hypothesis 3 in a 2 (gender of candidate) × 3 (initiate negotiations: no ask vs. moderate ask vs. strong ask) × 2 (gender of evaluator) between-subjects design. Participants evaluated a candidate based on a transcript of a job placement interview. We ran two versions of the ask manipulation in order to explore whether the manner in which the candidate initiated negotiations would moderate the predicted interaction effect of

Experiment 3

In Experiment 3, we conducted another test of Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2a, Hypothesis 2b, Hypothesis 3 in a 2 (gender of candidate) × 2 (initiate negotiations: no ask vs. ask) × 2 (gender of evaluator) between-subjects design. The scenario was identical to the one used in Experiment 2, except that the participants evaluated candidates based on their behavior in a videotaped interview. The videotaped candidates used the no ask and strong ask scripts that participants read in Experiment 2.

Our

Experiment 4

In Experiment 4, we tested our second set of Hypothesis 4, Hypothesis 5, Hypothesis 6a in a 2 (gender of participant) × 2 (gender of evaluator) between-subjects experimental design. Adopting the perspective of the candidate in the job placement interview scenario, participants reviewed two potential strategies for how to respond to a question about their salary and benefits offer. The two strategies were identical to the no ask and ask scripts in Experiment 3. In order to test for effects by

General discussion

We posed the question at the beginning of this article of whether women’s greater reluctance (as compared to men) to initiate negotiations over resources, such as higher compensation, could be explained by the differential treatment of male and female negotiators. The results of these experiments suggest that the answer to this question is yes. In the first three experiments, male evaluators penalized women more than men for attempting to negotiate for higher compensation. In Experiment 4,

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    We gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation SES-0213474 and the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The authors thank the following people for their helpful comments on this manuscript: Elaine Backman, Diane Burton, Robin Ely, Frank Flynn, Adam Galinsky, Michele Gelfand, Fiona Greig, Laura Kray, Jennifer Lerner, Kathleen McGinn, Denise Rousseau, Maureen Scully, and William Simpson.

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