A second manifestation of women’s greater relational concerns is their greater empathy (Pelligra, 2011) and their better perspective-taking ability (Horgan and Smith, 2006). There is mounting research evidence that the ability to step into another negotiator’s shoes improves outcomes: the better able negotiators are to incorporate the other party’s interests into their proposals and to frame those proposals in a way that demonstrates the benefits to others, the better able they are to influence others (Maddux, Mullen and Galinsky, 2008). Because women are better than men at interpreting nonverbal behaviors (Horgan and Smith, 2006), they are likely to detect subtle cues that indicate the other party’s reactions to proposals. This may explain why women perform better than men when they are able to see each other and maintain eye contact with their negotiating counterparts than when visual cues are absent (Swaab and Swaab, 2009). It may also account for why women are less likely than men to be influenced by e-mail and to behave in a more hostile manner in virtual negotiations (Guadagno and Cialdini, 2002, 2007; Katz, Amichai-Hamburger, Manisterski, and Kraus, 2008; Stuhlmacher, Citera, and Willis, 2007). These findings suggest that women become more self-protective when they are unable to read the other negotiator and that they obtain poorer outcomes as a result.
A third manifestation of women’s greater relational concern is their attitude to the use of ethically ambiguous negotiation tactics. A recent meta-analysis of behavioral ethics suggests that women generally follow a more ethical path than men do (Kish-Gephart, Harrison, and Trevino, 2010; Kray and Haselhuhn, 2012). The broad trend is replicated in women’s and men’s attitudes to a range of ethically ambiguous negotiation tactics, including competitive behaviors, misrepresentation, making false promises, and faking positive and negative emotions. In each case, women rate these tactics as less acceptable than men do (Cohen, 2009; Kray and Haselhuhn, 2012; Ma and McLean Parks, 2012; Schweitzer and Gibson, 2008).
Social Roles and Negotiation
Social roles set the expectations that we hold of how women and men should behave. These prescriptive stereotypes, and their violations, appear to play a central role in women’s economic and social outcomes (Kulik and Olekalns, 2012). It is therefore important to consider how the activation of male and female gender stereotypes affects negotiation outcomes. One line of research suggests that when women link effective negotiation to male-stereotyped behaviors, their performance deteriorates. When male gender stereotypes are implicitly activated, women are placed at a disadvantage. Men outperform women when effective negotiation is linked to male-typed behaviors such as assertiveness or when negotiation is described as diagnostic of ability (Kray, Thompson, and Galinsky, 2001; Kray, Galinsky, and Thompson, 2002). This effect is boosted when negotiators also have high power (Kray, Reb, Galinsky, and Thompson, 2004). Conversely, when effective negotiation is linked to feminine traits, women outperform men. These findings suggest that both men and women perform better when they believe that stereotype-congruent traits are predictive of success (Kray et al., 2002, 2004). When stereotypes are explicitly invoked, negotiators adopt stereotype-incongruent behaviors (Kray et al., 2001). When negotiators have high power, stereotype-incongruent behaviors are also triggered by the desire to make a positive impression: under these conditions, men are more likely to concede to others, whereas women are more likely to claim a greater share of resources (Curhan and Overbeck, 2008). Women may thus benefit from contextual cues that prime problem solving or explicitly prime gender stereotypes.
These findings, together with evidence that women do behave in a gender-congruent way in the opening and closing moments of negotiations, suggest that they are more sensitive than men to the potential costs of violating social roles. This sensitivity is well justified because women who negotiate incur social penalties: the very act of initiating a negotiation results in women being perceived as less likable and more demanding (Amanatullah and Tinsley, 2013; Bowles, Babcock, and Lai, 2007). Consequently, at least the reluctance to initiate negotiations might be attributable to their anticipation of the social costs that they incur when they do negotiate (Greig, 2010).
The expectation that women are more concerned about preserving relationships may invite others to act exploitatively. Focusing on the use of deception, Kray, Kennedy, and Van Zant (2012) showed that women elicit more deception than men do. Moreover, recent research shows that women are less likely than men to retaliate against unfair behavior (Singer et al., 2006; Zak, Borja, Matzner, and Kurzban, 2005), suggesting that they are less likely to fight back in pursuit of economic outcomes. It is therefore unsurprising that although women are more trustworthy, they are less willing to trust others and are more attuned to the possibility of betrayal (Buchan, Croson, and Solnick, 2008; Hong and Bohnet, 2007; Maddux and Brewer, 2005). They are also more likely to base their actions on the perceived trustworthiness of others (Pelligra, 2011).
Social Roles and Context
The discussion of conflict styles identified the possibility that women and men may adapt their behavior to the social context within which conflicts occur. In negotiations, there is considerable evidence that women are more sensitive to context than men are. One benefit of this greater sensitivity is that they are better able to match the nonverbal and verbal behaviors of the other party, leading to better outcomes (Flynn and Ames, 2006; Maddux et al., 2008). Research shows that women adjust their behavior in anticipation of others’ reactions. Unlike men, women adjust their negotiating styles depending on whether they are negotiating for themselves or on behalf of others (Bowles, Babcock, and McGinn, 2005). Their level of assertiveness increases when they negotiate on behalf of others, resulting in better outcomes in other-advocacy negotiations (Amantullah and Morris, 2010). Finally, women are more likely to persist when male counterparts say no than when women counterparts say no. However, they change styles in order to continue the negotiation: consistent with women’s greater propensity to mask their feelings, women express disappointment with their male counterparts indirectly through nonverbal cues (Bowles and Flynn, 2010).
Many of the negotiations studied in pursuit of gender differences focus on compensation issues (Stuhmacher and Walters, 1999). Compensation negotiations have been identified as a protoypically male domain, and so it is possible that women are doubly disadvantaged in compensation negotiations (Gray, 1994). Not only are they negotiating for themselves, they are also negotiating on a topic that may be seen as inappropriate for women. Two recent studies test the hypothesis that women may perform as well as or better than men when they negotiate about more gender-congruent issues. Bear (2011) focused on the relationship between the gender congruency of the issue under negotiation and the preference to avoid negotiating. She showed that women were more likely than men to avoid compensation negotiations. However, men were more likely than women to avoid negotiations about access to a lactation room. Extending this finding, Bear and Babcock (2012) showed that women outperform men when they negotiate about a female-typed topic (decorative beads for making lamp shades) but that men outperform women when they negotiate about a male-typed topic (halogen headlights). These findings suggest that gender stereotypes define what is an appropriate negotiation for women and that the economic and social costs that women incur may be more evident when they violate stereotypes by negotiating male-typed issues.
Women are also sensitive to their opponent’s gender. Eriksson and Sandberg (2012) show that women’s willingness, but not men’s willingness, to initiate negotiations is affected by their opponent’s gender: women are more likely to initiate negotiations with men than with other women. Although this seems counterintuitive, women’s reluctance to persist in their negotiations with other women may have some merit. Research shows that women are most frustrated by conflicts with other women, more likely to compete and retaliate when negotiating with other women, and least cooperative in response to other women (Scharlemann, Eckel, Kacelnik, and Wilson, 2001; Schroth, Bain-Chekal, and Caldwell, 2005; Sutter, Bosman, Kocher, and van Winde
n, 2009). More recent research shows that women incur the greatest loss of trust when they enact a competitive strategy in negotiations with other women (Olekalns, Kulik, and Simonov, 2010). This pattern of behavior casts the finding that two female negotiators obtain poorer economic outcomes than two male negotiators in a new light, suggesting it may be the result of escalating competitiveness and relational damage rather than women’s greater willingness to accommodate other female negotiators.
Finally, in an investigation of deception in negotiation, Olekalns, Kulik, and Chew (in press) showed that deception was lowest in all-female dyads and highest in male-female dyads. However, negotiating style and opponents’ trustworthiness modified this basic pattern. Olekalns et al. (in press) reported that in male-female dyads, deception consistently increased when untrustworthy opponents used an accommodating strategy. In all-female dyads, the decision to deceive an opponent was more complex. Of particular note was that whereas low trust encouraged women to withhold information when their female opponents competed, high trust encouraged women to misrepresent information when their female opponents accommodated.
Summary
The key findings in negotiation research parallel those from the dispute resolution literature. First, there is evidence that women and men manage several aspects of negotiation differently and in ways that reflect their different self-construals. Women are more likely than men to avoid negotiations, they ask for less than men do, and they end negotiations as quickly as possible by accepting the first offer. They also display greater empathy and better perspective-taking skills. As a result, they perform better in face-to-face situations where they can read the other negotiator than in electronic negotiations where this is not possible.
Second, there is evidence that social roles affect how negotiations unfold. An intriguing set of findings shows that women perform poorly only when male-stereotyped behaviors are linked to negotiation success; they outperform men when they believe that female-stereotyped behaviors are the key to negotiation success. A more readily predicted set of findings shows that women incur social costs when they initiate negotiations and that the anticipation of these social costs underpins their reluctance to negotiate. Finally, the anticipation that women place greater emphasis on preserving relationships appears to invite exploitation: unfair offers and more deception.
Third, the broader social context affects how negotiations develop. Paralleling the finding that women are more successful when female-stereotyped traits are linked to effective negotiations, they are also more successful when negotiating about female-typed topics. Women also adapt their actions based on an opponent’s gender: women are less likely to initiate negotiations with other women, report greater frustration when negotiating with other women, and evaluate stereotype violations by female opponents more harshly than men do. Finally, in their decisions to deceive an opponent, women are more sensitive than men to social cues: an opponent’s trustworthiness, gender, and negotiating style.
NEGOTIATING BOUNDARIES
Women’s employment negotiations dominate the research on gender differences in negotiation. Yet these contract negotiations, despite their considerable economic impact, form only a small part of the negotiations that women and men engage in. Employment contract negotiations occur at quite distinct and constrained points in individuals’ careers: at organizational entry, on promotion or role change, or following a move to a new employer. In between these career moments, individuals negotiate almost daily. While many of these negotiations take place within their organizations, an equal number occur outside organizations in the day-to-day lives of men and women. It is surprising that these day-to-day negotiations receive relatively little attention (see Stuhlmacher and Linabery, 2013, for a review of work-life negotiations).
One obvious area for negotiation is in the division of household tasks. Paralleling women’s general reluctance to negotiate, Mannino and Deutsch (2007) report that even though wives are typically dissatisfied with the division of household tasks, they are also reluctant to renegotiate that division of labor. Thebaud (2010), using International Social Survey Program data, tested the relationship between household income and the division of household tasks. Specifically, she tested whether the relative earning capacity of men and women in the same household is reflected in how housework is allocated. She argued that housework allocation gives us insight into household bargaining, specifically the extent to which men who earn less than their partners exchange income for household tasks. Although, in general, men with lower incomes than their spouse do report doing more housework than men with higher incomes, the increase in housework (1.5 hours per week) does not restore parity. Women, no matter what their income, do more housework than men. These findings imply not only that women have failed to negotiate an equitable exchange, but that they may be punished for the counternormative behavior of earning more than their husbands through an expectation that they continue to do more of the housework.
In the same way that career changes punctuate work lives, a series of socially defined transitions punctuate lives outside work. One such transition is pregnancy. At the point a women announces her pregnancy in the workplace, she also needs to negotiate changes to her work arrangements. Despite a general reluctance to negotiate, women are more likely to ask for flexible work arrangements than men based on their child care responsibilities (Hornung, Rousseau, and Glaser, 2008). Although women and men are equally likely to negotiate parental leave following the birth of a child (Brandth and Kvande, 2002; Greenberg, Ladge, and Clair, 2009), the rationale for their requests differs. Like men in divorce mediations, men negotiating parental leave use rational arguments that incorporate their work responsibilities. Like men in negotiations more generally, they persist through moments of adversity—in this case, unsupportive managers.
Women, because of their legal entitlements, do not need to craft arguments in support of leave. However, they do incur social penalties that men do not: whereas the announcement of a pregnancy decreases women’s perceived competence, it boosts men’s perceived likability (Cuddy, Fiske, and Glick, 2004). This change in status might explain why women who negotiate the terms of their maternity leave are perceived as more difficult than women who do not do so (Liu and Buzzanell, 2004). The difficulties spill over to the point when maternity leave ends, affecting women’s ability to negotiate their reentry into the workforce with responsibilities comparable to preparental leave responsibilities (Miller, Jablin, Casey, and Lamphear-Van Horn, 1996).
A very different kind of life transition occurs when adult children need to negotiate care arrangements with elderly parents who have had multiple falls. Horton and Arber (2004) showed that how the discussion about fall prevention is approached depends on whether it is initiated by sons or daughters. Sons, in negotiations with their mothers, take either a protective or a coercive approach, whereas in negotiations with their fathers, they take no specific actions other than maintaining respect. Thus, through their negotiation styles, sons relegated their mothers to a more powerless and submissive position than their fathers. In comparison, daughters employed the same strategies of engaging and negotiating with both mothers and fathers. They thus established a more empowering relationship with their parents, giving them greater input into the decisions surrounding their ongoing care.
Summary
Once the focus moves from contract negotiations to other kinds of negotiations, research centers more around the impact of social roles than the impact of women’s and men’s self-construals. Nonetheless, there are some striking parallels between the findings described in this section and the previous sections on conflict resolution and contract negotiations. Social roles and gender-based expectations discourage women from negotiating an equitable (decreased) housework load but encourage them to negotiate the terms and conditions of their maternity leave. Despite their greater willingness to negotiate on a gender-congruent topic, women who do choose to negotiate the terms of their leave and reentry into the
workforce are perceived as more difficult than those who do not, incurring the same social costs that they incur in contract negotiations. Women and men, in negotiating care arrangements with elderly parents, treat mothers and fathers differently.
QUESTIONS NOT YET ANSWERED
Emotion, and the role of emotional expression in negotiation, has emerged as a central theme in negotiation research. This research has explored how the expression of emotions affects opponents, in particular their willingness to give concessions. A consistent body of research shows that anger, directed toward an opponent, increases the size of concessions (van Kleef and Sinaceur, 2013). Disappointment, however, affects opponents’ offers seemingly because it triggers guilt in the other party (Leliveld, Van Dijk, Van Beest, Steinel, and Van Kleef, 2011; Nelissen, Leliveld, Van Dijk, and Zeelenberg, 2011). Whereas negative emotions appear to improve a negotiator’s individual outcomes, positive emotions improve the relationship with opponents. Negotiators who express positive affect are seen as more desirable future negotiation partners (Kopelman, Rosette, Thompson, 2006), and positive affect increases negotiators’ willingness to implement a final agreement (Mislin, Campagna, and Bottom, 2011).
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