IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/rwp05-045.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

It Depends Who Is Asking and Who You Ask: Social Incentives for Sex Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiation

Author

Listed:
  • Bowles, Hannah Riley

    (Harvard U)

  • Babcock, Linda

    (Carnegie Mellon U)

  • Lai, Lei

Abstract

Two experiments show that sex differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations may be explained by differential treatment of men and women when they attempt to negotiate. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated candidates who either accepted compensation offers without comment or attempted to negotiate higher compensation. Men only penalized female candidates for attempting to negotiate whereas women penalized both male and female candidates. Perceptions of niceness and demandingness mediated these effects. In Experiment 2, participants adopted candidates’ role in same scenario and assessed whether to accept the compensation offer or attempt to negotiate for more. Women were less likely than men to choose to negotiate when the evaluator was male, but not when the evaluator was female. This effect was mediated by women’s nervousness about negotiating with male evaluators. This work illuminates how differential treatment may influence the distribution of organizational resources through sex differences in the propensity to negotiate.

Suggested Citation

  • Bowles, Hannah Riley & Babcock, Linda & Lai, Lei, 2005. "It Depends Who Is Asking and Who You Ask: Social Incentives for Sex Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiation," Working Paper Series rwp05-045, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp05-045
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=3048&type=WPN
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kray, Laura J. & Galinsky, Adam D. & Thompson, Leigh, 2002. "Reversing the Gender Gap in Negotiations: An Exploration of Stereotype Regeneration," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 386-410, March.
    2. Walters, Amy E. & Stuhlmacher, Alice F. & Meyer, Lia L., 1998. "Gender and Negotiator Competitiveness: A Meta-analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 1-29, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abigail LeBlanc & Stephen Sheppard, 2022. "Women artists: gender, ethnicity, origin and contemporary prices," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 46(3), pages 439-481, September.
    2. Smita Das & Clara Delavallade & Ayodele Fashogbon & Wale Olatunji Ogunleye & Sreelakshmi Papineni, 2023. "Occupational sex segregation in agriculture: Evidence on gender norms and socio‐emotional skills in Nigeria," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 54(2), pages 179-219, March.
    3. Das,Smita & Delavallade,Clara Anne & Fashogbon,Ayodele Emmanuel & Ogunleye,Wale Olatunji & Papineni,Sreelakshmi, 2021. "Occupational Sex Segregation in Agriculture : Evidence on Gender Norms and Socio-Emotional Skills in Nigeria," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9695, The World Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kray, Laura J. & Kennedy, Jessica A. & Van Zant, Alex B., 2014. "Not competent enough to know the difference? Gender stereotypes about women’s ease of being misled predict negotiator deception," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 61-72.
    2. Huang, Jennie & Low, Corinne, 2022. "The myth of the male negotiator: Gender’s effect on negotiation strategies and outcomes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 517-532.
    3. Najib A. Mozahem & Moniat El Noufous K. El Masri & Nazhat M. Najm & Samah S. Saleh, 2021. "How Gender Differences in Entitlement and Apprehension Manifest Themselves in Negotiation," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 587-610, June.
    4. Patricia Elgoibar & Elio Shijaku, 2022. "Bringing the Social Back into Sustainability: Why Integrative Negotiation Matters," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-12, May.
    5. Bowles, Hannah Riley, 2012. "Psychological Perspectives on Gender in Negotiation," Working Paper Series rwp12-046, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Bowles, Hannah Riley & Babcock, Linda & Lai, Lei, 2007. "Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 84-103, May.
    7. Bowles, Hannah Riley & Flynn, Francis J., 2007. "Getting Past No: Gender and the Propensity to Persist in Negotiation," Working Paper Series rwp07-063, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    8. Bertrand, Marianne, 2011. "New Perspectives on Gender," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 17, pages 1543-1590, Elsevier.
    9. Bowles, Hannah Riley, 2012. "Psychological Perspectives on Gender in Negotiation," Scholarly Articles 9830358, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    10. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
    11. Bowles, Hannah Riley & Babcock, Linda & McGinn, Kathleen L., 2005. "Constraints and Triggers: Situational Mechanics of Gender in Negotiation," Working Paper Series rwp05-051, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    12. Becchetti, Leonardo & Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Ottone, Stefania & Solferino, Nazaria, 2013. "Allocation criteria under task performance: The gendered preference for protection," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 96-111.
    13. Chaudhuri, Ananish & Cruickshank, Amy & Sbai, Erwann, 2015. "Gender differences in personnel management: Some experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 20-32.
    14. Peng, Ann C. & Dunn, Jennifer & Conlon, Donald E., 2015. "When vigilance prevails: The effect of regulatory focus and accountability on integrative negotiation outcomes," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 77-87.
    15. Arthur Kennelly & Edmund Fantino, 2007. "The Sharing Game: Fairness in resource allocation as a function of incentive, gender, and recipient types," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 2, pages 204-216, June.
    16. Pittinsky, Todd L. & Shih, Margaret & Trahan, Amy, 2005. "Identity Cues: Evidence from and for Intra-Individual Perspectives on Stereotyping," Working Paper Series rwp05-010, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    17. Inés P. Murillo & Hipólito Simón, 2014. "La Gran Recesión y el diferencial salarial por género en España," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 208(1), pages 39-76, March.
    18. Halvarsson, Daniel & Lark, Olga & Tingvall, Patrik & Videnord, Josefin, 2022. "Bargaining for Trade: When Exporting Becomes Detrimental for Female Wages," Working Paper Series 1437, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    19. Buchan, Nancy R. & Croson, Rachel T.A. & Solnick, Sara, 2008. "Trust and gender: An examination of behavior and beliefs in the Investment Game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(3-4), pages 466-476, December.
    20. Kray, Laura J. & Shirako, Aiwa, 2009. "Stereotype Threat in Organizations: An Examination of its Scope, Triggers, and Possible Interventions," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt3wh9z792, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp05-045. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ksharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.