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

Neural computations underpinning the strategic management of influence in advice giving

Research on social influence has focused mainly on the target of influence (e.g., consumer and voter); thus, the cognitive and neurobiological underpinnings of the source of the influence (e.g., politicians and salesmen) remain unknown. Here, in a three-sided advice-giving game, two advisers competed to influence a client by modulating their own confidence in their advice about which lottery the client should choose. We report that advisers’ strategy depends on their level of influence on the client and their merit relative to one another. Moreover, blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the temporo-parietal junction is modulated by adviser’s current level of influence on the client, and relative merit prediction error affects activity in medial-prefrontal cortex. Both types of social information modulate ventral striatum response. By demonstrating what happens in our mind and brain when we try to influence others, these results begin to explain the biological mechanisms that shape inter-individual differences in social conduct.

Though it's important to influence others' decisions, the neural correlates of persuasive strategies are not known. Here, authors show that people change their advice based on its accuracy and whether they are being listened to, and identify the distinct brain regions underpinning each strategy.

Self-Presentation Strategies, Fear of Success and Anticipation of Future Success among University and High School Students

The backlash avoidance model (BAM) suggests women insufficiently self-promote because they fear backlash for behavior which is incongruent with traditional gender roles. Avoiding self-promoting behavior is also potentially related to associating success with negative consequences. In two studies we tested whether self-promotion and fear of success will be predictors of lower salaries and anticipation of lower chances of success in an exam. In study 1, prior to the exam they were about to take, we asked 234 students about their predictions concerning exam results and their future earnings. They also filled scales measuring their associations with success (fear of success) and tendency for self-promotion. The tested model proved that in comparison to men, women expect lower salaries in the future, anticipate lower test performance and associate success with more negative consequences. Both tendency for self-promotion and fear of success are related to anticipation of success in test performance and expectations concerning future earnings. In study 2 we repeated the procedure on a sample of younger female and male high school pupils (N = 100) to verify whether associating success with negative consequences and differences in self-promotion strategies are observable in a younger demographic. Our results show that girls and boys in high school do not differ with regard to fear of success, self-promotion or agency levels. Girls and boys anticipated to obtain similar results in math exam results, but girls expected to have higher results in language exams. Nevertheless, school pupils also differed regarding their future earnings but only in the short term. Fear of success and agency self-ratings were significant predictors of expectations concerning future earnings, but only among high school boys and with regard to earnings expected just after graduation.

Current Status of Gender and Racial/Ethnic Disparities Among Academic Emergency Medicine Physicians

OBJECTIVE

A 2010 survey identified disparities in salaries by gender and underrepresented minorities (URM). With an increase in the emergency medicine (EM) workforce since, we aimed to 1) describe the current status of academic EM workforce by gender, race, and rank and 2) evaluate if disparities still exist in salary or rank by gender.

METHODS

Information on demographics, rank, clinical commitment, and base and total annual salary for full-time faculty members in U.S. academic emergency departments were collected in 2015 via the Academy of Administrators in Academic Emergency Medicine (AAAEM) Salary Survey. Multiple linear regression was used to compare salary by gender while controlling for confounders.

RESULTS

Response rate was 47% (47/101), yielding data on 1,371 full-time faculty: 33% women, 78% white, 4% black, 5% Asian, 3% Asian Indian, 4% other, and 7% unknown race. Comparing white race to nonwhite, 62% versus 69% were instructor/assistant, 23% versus 20% were associate, and 15% versus 10% were full professors. Comparing women to men, 74% versus 59% were instructor/assistant, 19% versus 24% were associate, and 7% versus 17% were full professors. Of 113 chair/vice-chair positions, only 15% were women, and 18% were nonwhite. Women were more often fellowship trained (37% vs. 31%), less often core faculty (59% vs. 64%), with fewer administrative roles (47% vs. 57%; all p < 0.05) but worked similar clinical hours (mean ± SD = 1,069 ± 371 hours vs. 1,051 ± 393 hours). Mean overall salary was $278,631 (SD ± $68,003). The mean (±SD) salary of women was $19,418 (±$3,736) less than men (p < 0.001), even after adjusting for race, region, rank, years of experience, clinical hours, core faculty status, administrative roles, board certification, and fellowship training.

CONCLUSIONS

In 2015, disparities in salary and rank persist among full-time U.S. academic EM faculty. There were gender and URM disparities in rank and leadership positions. Women earned less than men regardless of rank, clinical hours, or training. Future efforts should focus on evaluating salary data by race and developing systemwide practices to eliminate disparities.

A proposed model for effective negotiation skill development

Purpose

Previous research on negotiation skills has focused mostly on the negotiation itself and tactics used when bargaining, while little research has examined the process by which people become effective negotiators. The purpose of this paper is to develop an initial model from an intra-organizational perspective to outline the factors that contribute to the development of negotiation skills and behaviors by employees.

Design/methodology/approach

This conceptual paper relies on prior research and existing theory to focus on the types of developmental and learning experiences and processes that lead to the acquisition of three specific types of key negotiation skills and behaviors.

Findings

Distributive, integrative, and adaptable negotiation skills are developed most effectively via different learning and development activities, respectively. Additionally, unique individual difference and situational variables could contribute to particular negotiation behaviors, either directly or via an interaction with developmental experiences.

Practical implications

The paper proposes a model for future testing in which results can provide support for tailored/customized training and development of employee negotiation skills. Providing the correct people with the correct tools in the correct manner is always desirable by practitioners.

Originality/value

This proposed holistic model provides new insights, structure, and suggestions for more research on factors that lead to negotiation skill development and exhibition of effective negotiation behaviors. This paper goes beyond description of negotiation tactics and addresses the various negotiation contexts and the unique skills needed for each. Most importantly, the paper addresses how those skills are uniquely and most effectively developed.

Women and Leadership

Despite the proliferation of leadership research in the past 75 years, investigating the ways in which women and men leaders enact and experience leadership continues to surface unanswered questions. Through the framework of selection, development, leadership style, and performance, we report gender-related findings from a broad survey of existing literature from the past three decades. Findings include differential rates of selection for women and men leaders; leader development considerations that vary by gender; evidence in favor of general similarities in leadership style (with noted exceptions) between women and men leaders; and similar performance outcomes between women and men leaders. The importance of context, be it job type, group composition, organizational culture, or industry/sector, was also revealed. Implications for practitioners and academics alike are offered throughout this report.

Librarians and compensation negotiation in the library workplace

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to report on survey results from a study about librarians’ experience with compensation (salary and benefits) negotiation in the library workplace in order to provide data that will inform professional discourse and practice.

Design/methodology/approach

A primarily quantitative survey instrument was administered via Qualtrics Survey Software and distributed through listservs and social media channels representing a range of library types and sub-disciplines. The survey was explicitly addressed to librarians for participation and asked them questions related to their work history and experience with negotiating for salary and benefits.

Findings

A total of 1,541 librarians completed the survey. More than half of survey respondents reported not negotiating for their current library position. The majority of those who did negotiate reported positive outcomes, including an increase in salary or total compensation package. Only a very small number of respondents reported threats to rescind or rescinded offers when negotiating for their current positions. Respondents cited prior salary and prior work experience and/or education as the top information sources informing negotiation strategy.

Originality/value

There is minimal discussion of salary and benefits negotiation by individuals in the library literature and prior surveys of librarians’ experience with compensation negotiation do not exist. This is the first paper that tracks negotiating practices and outcomes of librarians in library workplaces of all types.

Negotiating Femininity

According to gender role congruity theory, women, compared to men, underperform in masculine negotiations because these negotiations are incongruent with women’s gender role. Based on this framework, we developed two gender-relevant primes—a masculine-supplement prime and a feminine-complement prime—that address role incongruity and should improve women’s economic performance by either supplementing masculinity or complementing femininity. In Study 1, physicians ( N = 78; 50% women) in an executive education program engaged in a masculine-supplement prime, which involved recalling agentic behavior; in Study 2, undergraduate students ( N = 112; 50% women) completed a feminine-complement prime, which involved imagining negotiating for a friend. In Study 3, a community sample ( N = 996; 46% women) completed an online experiment with the primes. Results from the three studies showed that these primes improved women’s economic performance and eliminated the gender gap in negotiation. Perception of fit partially explained the efficacy of the masculine-supplement prime for women, though not the feminine-complement prime. We build on past research concerning situational moderators by investigating gender role congruity from an intrapsychic perspective. We also make a practical contribution; these primes can be used by women to improve economic performance in gender role incongruent negotiations. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index .

Adaptive Appraisals of Anxiety Moderate the Association between Cortisol Reactivity and Performance in Salary Negotiations

Prior research suggests that stress can be harmful in high-stakes contexts such as negotiations. However, few studies actually measure stress physiologically during negotiations, nor do studies offer interventions to combat the potential negative effects of heightened physiological responses in negotiation contexts. In the current research, we offer evidence that the negative effects of cortisol increases on negotiation performance can be reduced through a reappraisal of anxiety manipulation. We experimentally induced adaptive appraisals by randomly assigning 97 male and female participants to receive either instructions to appraise their anxiety as beneficial to the negotiation or no specific instructions on how to appraise the situation. We also measured participants' cortisol responses prior to and following the negotiation. Results revealed that cortisol increases were positively related to negotiation performance for participants who were told to view anxiety as beneficial, and not detrimental, for negotiation performance (appraisal condition). In contrast, cortisol increases were negatively related to negotiation performance for participants given no instructions on appraising their anxiety (control condition). These findings offer a means through which to combat the potentially deleterious effects of heightened cortisol reactivity on negotiation outcomes.

The Influence of Power and Individualism-Collectivism on Negotiation Initiation

Abstract Negotiation is an essential business process, with the initiation of a negotiation likely to affect how the process unfolds. Despite the fact that opportunities are often lost when one or more parties fail to initiate, initiation has until recently been overlooked in negotiation process models and research. This paper reports findings from a study that examines the effects situational/contextual factors and culture have on the initiation process (engaging a prospective counterpart, making a request, and optimizing that request), focusing specifically on relative bargaining power (a situational factor) and individualism-collectivism. Higher bargaining power was found to increase the likelihood of initiation intentionality in general as well as the requesting and optimizing phases more specifically. In addition, individualism/collectivism was also found to affect initiation, with individualists more likely than collectivists to initiate a negotiation. Further, this effect was enhanced when individualists had high relative bargaining power. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, with suggestions for future research.

A model of idiosyncratic deal-making and attitudinal outcomes

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the relationship between the request of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) and the receipt of such deals, and investigate the moderating roles of human capital (gender and industry experience) and social capital (leader-member exchange (LMX)) in this relationship. Attitudinal outcomes of i-deals receipt are also examined.

Design/methodology/approach

– Data were collected from 244 alumni of a Midwestern public university.

Findings

– The positive relationship between i-deals request and receipt was stronger at higher than at lower levels of LMX. Receiving i-deals was related positively to job satisfaction and affective commitment, and negatively to turnover intention.

Research limitations/implications

– The authors provide a nuanced perspective of i-deals by separating employees’ request from their receipt of i-deals, and identifying contingent factors that determine whether i-deal requests are successful.

Practical implications

– For employees, cultivating a strong relationship with one’s supervisor can yield benefits that extend to i-deals negotiation. Providing i-deals to deserving workers can boost employees’ work attitudes.

Originality/value

– Previous studies have operationalized the i-deals construct as requesting and receiving the deal, thereby excluding the possibility that employees may have requested but did not receive the i-deal. This is one of the first studies to disentangle these two concepts, thereby providing a more balanced and representative view of i-deal-making in organizations.

The Separate Spheres Model of Gendered Inequality

Research on role congruity theory and descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes has established that when men and women violate gender stereotypes by crossing spheres, with women pursuing career success and men contributing to domestic labor, they face backlash and economic penalties. Less is known, however, about the types of individuals who are most likely to engage in these forms of discrimination and the types of situations in which this is most likely to occur. We propose that psychological research will benefit from supplementing existing research approaches with an individual differences model of support for separate spheres for men and women. This model allows psychologists to examine individual differences in support for separate spheres as they interact with situational and contextual forces. The separate spheres ideology (SSI) has existed as a cultural idea for many years but has not been operationalized or modeled in social psychology. The Separate Spheres Model presents the SSI as a new psychological construct characterized by individual differences and a motivated system-justifying function, operationalizes the ideology with a new scale measure, and models the ideology as a predictor of some important gendered outcomes in society. As a first step toward developing the Separate Spheres Model, we develop a new measure of individuals' endorsement of the SSI and demonstrate its reliability, convergent validity, and incremental predictive validity. We provide support for the novel hypotheses that the SSI predicts attitudes regarding workplace flexibility accommodations, income distribution within families between male and female partners, distribution of labor between work and family spheres, and discriminatory workplace behaviors. Finally, we provide experimental support for the hypothesis that the SSI is a motivated, system-justifying ideology.

Bargaining, Sorting, and the Gender Wage Gap: Quantifying the Impact of Firms on the Relative Pay of Women *

There is growing evidence that firm-specific pay premiums are an important source of wage inequality. These premiums will contribute to the gender wage gap if women are less likely to work at high-paying firms or if women negotiate (or are offered) worse wage bargains with their employers than men. Using longitudinal data on the hourly wages of Portuguese workers matched with income statement information for firms, we show that the wages of both men and women contain firm-specific premiums that are strongly correlated with simple measures of the potential bargaining surplus at each firm. We then show how the impact of these firm-specific pay differentials on the gender wage gap can be decomposed into a combination of sorting and bargaining effects. We find that women are less likely to work at firms that pay higher premiums to either gender, with sorting effects being most important for low- and middle-skilled workers. We also find that women receive only 90% of the firm-specific pay premiums earned by men. Importantly, we find the same gender gap in the responses of wages to changes in potential surplus over time. Taken together, the combination of sorting and bargaining effects explain about one-fifth of the cross-sectional gender wage gap in Portugal.

Compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable

Women are underrepresented in most high-level positions in organizations. Though a great deal of research has provided evidence that bias and discrimination give rise to and perpetuate this gender disparity, in the current research we explore another explanation: men and women view professional advancement differently, and their views affect their decisions to climb the corporate ladder (or not). In studies 1 and 2, when asked to list their core goals in life, women listed more life goals overall than men, and a smaller proportion of their goals related to achieving power at work. In studies 3 and 4, compared to men, women viewed high-level positions as less desirable yet equally attainable. In studies 5-7, when faced with the possibility of receiving a promotion at their current place of employment or obtaining a high-power position after graduating from college, women and men anticipated similar levels of positive outcomes (e.g., prestige and money), but women anticipated more negative outcomes (e.g., conflict and tradeoffs). In these studies, women associated high-level positions with conflict, which explained the relationship between gender and the desirability of professional advancement. Finally, in studies 8 and 9, men and women alike rated power as one of the main consequences of professional advancement. Our findings reveal that men and women have different perceptions of what the experience of holding a high-level position will be like, with meaningful implications for the perpetuation of the gender disparity that exists at the top of organizational hierarchies.

How do interviewers respond to applicants’ initiation of salary negotiation? An exploratory study on the role of gender and personality

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to examine whether women encounter more social resistance than men do when they attempt to negotiate for higher compensation, and whether the gender and personality of the interviewer moderates that resistance.

Design/methodology/approach

– The authors conducted an experiment to explore how gender and personality jointly influence interviewers’ decision making in job negotiations.

Findings

– The authors found that: first, female interviewees who initiate negotiations in a job interview are penalized by both male and female interviewers; second, more agreeable interviewers are “nicer” than less agreeable ones to interviewees who ask for more pay, even after controlling for the interviewers’ gender; and third, more extraverted interviewers are “tougher” than less extraverted interviewers toward interviewees who initiate salary negotiation. These phenomena are more pronounced when interviewees are male as opposed to female.

Research limitations/implications

– Some limitations need to be brought to the reader’s attention. First, the participants of this study are undergraduate students. While most of them have job interview experience as an interviewee, few have any experience as an interviewer. In order to minimize this effect, we used human resources management students who previously had a course on hiring and selection in this experiment. Second, the order of the interviewees evaluated by participants, acting as interviewers, could cause an “order effect.”

Practical implications

– This study contributes to the gender, personality, and negotiations literature, and “fills the gap” on the joint effect of gender, personality, and hiring decision making. Gender discrimination during job interviews suggests that business needs to address discrimination and diversity issues earlier. It may be wise for management to consider the potential bias of an interviewer’s gender and personality on their hiring decisions before the organization makes a final decision on which interviewee should be hired and how much salary should be offered.

Originality/value

– To the best of the knowledge of the authors, no prior studies have explored the joint effect of gender and personality on negotiation behavior in a job interview setting from an interviewer’s perspective.

A Man’s (Precarious) Place

Across three studies, we investigate men’s reactions to women in superior roles. Drawing from precarious manhood theory, we hypothesize that when a woman occupies a superior organizational role, men in subordinate positions experience threat, which leads them to behave more assertively toward her and advocate for themselves. In Studies 1 and 2, we demonstrate that men feel more threatened (relative to women) by women in superior roles (relative to men in superior roles) and, as a result, engage in more assertive behaviors toward these women. In Study 3, we investigate a boundary condition to this effect and demonstrate that a woman in a superior role who displays qualities associated with administrative agency (e.g., directness, proactivity) rather than ambitious agency (e.g., self-promotion, power-seeking) elicits less assertive behavior from men. We conclude by discussing implications as well as directions for future research.

Initiation of negotiation and its role in negotiation research

Most psychological studies about negotiation examine processes, strategies, and outcomes by providing a context with given roles, issues, and resources to the parties involved. We argue that this research is incomplete as psychological variables and processes, antecedent to the initiation of negotiation, are excluded. A theoretical model is developed which explains the initiation of negotiation by the key motivational process of discrepancy reduction, which arouses an emotional reaction. It integrates valence, expectancy and instrumentality considerations as moderating variables. The model serves as a research agenda for the psychological study of the prenegotiation phase, and for answering the questions of when and why people initiate (or suppress) negotiations, thereby offering grounds for probing how subsequent negotiations might be affected by characteristics of the prenegotiation phase. The overall aim is to foster our understanding about the psychological origins of negotiations to complement what is already known about the negotiation process.

Condom negotiation: findings and future directions

The aim of this review was to summarize factors associated with condom negotiation among heterosexual men. Literature searches were conducted using multiple databases spanning several disciplines. Studies examining psychological, demographic, relational, communication, and environmental factors related to condom negotiation are described, and a three-dimensional framework of condom negotiation is proposed. This framework of condom negotiation may aid researchers in operationalizing this construct, organizing this literature, and facilitating measurement development. We used this three-dimensional framework to articulate the influence of gender, ethnicity, relationship type, partner characteristics, trauma history, post-traumatic stress, and alcohol use on condom negotiation. Areas for future research are outlined. More research is needed to understand how these factors interact to influence condom negotiation, as well as the interaction between gender and the identified factors.

Gender differences in salary in a recent cohort of early-career physician-researchers

PURPOSE

Studies have suggested that male physicians earn more than their female counterparts. The authors examined whether this disparity exists in a recently hired cohort.

METHOD

In 2010-2011, the authors surveyed recent recipients of National Institutes of Health (NIH) mentored career development (i.e., K08 or K23) awards, receiving responses from 1,275 (75% response rate). For the 1,012 physicians with academic positions in clinical specialties who reported salary, they constructed linear regression models of salary considering gender, age, race, marital status, parental status, additional doctoral degree, academic rank, years on faculty, specialty, institution type, region, institution NIH funding rank, K award type, K award funding institute, K award year, work hours, and research time. They evaluated the explanatory value of spousal employment status using Peters-Belson regression.

RESULTS

Mean salary was $141,325 (95% confidence interval [CI] 135,607-147,043) for women and $172,164 (95% CI 167,357-176,971) for men. Male gender remained an independent, significant predictor of salary (+$10,921, P < .001) even after adjusting for specialty, academic rank, work hours, research time, and other factors. Peters-Belson analysis indicated that 17% of the overall disparity in the full sample was unexplained by the measured covariates. In the married subset, after accounting for spousal employment status, 10% remained unexplained.

CONCLUSIONS

The authors observed, in this recent cohort of elite, early-career physician-researchers, a gender difference in salary that was not fully explained by specialty, academic rank, work hours, or even spousal employment. Creating more equitable procedures for establishing salary is important.