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

By Hannah Riley Bowles, Linda Babcock, Lei Lai. 2007

801 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/719627452838bbed4611c4cb737d08d0c6da65db

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Citations in the corpus

Gender Differences in Trust Dynamics: Women Trust More than Men Following a Trust Violation (2014, background): “Mediation of gender differences following a t (Bowles et al., 2007; Cuddy et al., 2008; Eagly, 1997) to predict that concern for relationships would lead women, more so than men, to maintain trust following a counterpart's transgressions.”
Negotiating the Gender Divide (2012, background): “Women judge people who negotiate more harshly than men do, and women report lower levels of trust in their negotiation opponents than men do (Bowles et al., 2007; Buchan, Croson, & Solnick, 2008).”
Faculty Service Loads and Gender: Are Women Taking Care of the Academic Family? (2017, neutral): “Similarly, Bowles et al. (2007) demonstrated, through a series of experiments about compensation negotiation, that women were more likely than men to face negative social consequences in the process.”