Not competent enough to know the difference? Gender stereotypes about women’s ease of being misled predict negotiator deception

Abstract

a b s t r a c tWe examined whether gender differences in the perceived ease of being misled predict the likelihood of being deceived in distributive negotiations. Study 1 (N = 131) confirmed that female negotiators are perceived as more easily misled than male negotiators. This perception corresponded with perceptions of women's relatively low competence. Study 2 (N = 328) manipulated negotiator gender, competence and warmth and found that being perceived as easily misled via low competence affected expectations about the negotiating process, including less deception scrutiny among easily misled negotiators and lower ethical standards among their negotiating counterparts. This pattern held true regardless of buyer and seller gender. Study 3 (N = 298) examined whether patterns of deception in face-to-face negotiations were consistent with this gender stereotype. As expected, negotiators deceived women more so than men, thus leading women into more deals under false pretenses than men.

A pawn in someone else's game?: The cognitive, motivational, and paradigmatic barriers to women's excelling in negotiation

“…Car dealers quoted significantly higher prices to women than to men. Similarly, Kray et al (2014) examined lying among MBA students enrolled in a negotiation course. The MBA students were negotiating the Bullard Houses simulation, which concerns a historical property.…”

“…In negotiations, underperformance follows naturally from negative beliefs about women's abilities and the competitive tactics that plague women as they negotiate. For instance, in Kray et al (2014), the deception directed at women negotiators led women to make more deals under false pretenses that did not serve their interests than did men.…”

A social-cognitive approach to understanding gender differences in negotiator ethics: The role of moral identity

“…Negotiations are a critical organizational context to understand. Beyond being a fundamental mechanism by which resources are divided, women face numerous hurdles in negotiations (Amanatullah & Morris, 2010;Bowles, Babcock, & McGinn, 2005;Kray, Kennedy, & Van Zant, 2014;Kray & Thompson, 2004;Kray, Thompson, & Galinsky, 2001;Tinsley, Cheldelin, Schneider, & Amanatullah, 2009). Additionally, negotiations are a masculine context (Bowles & Kray, 2013), in which men are expected to perform better than women (Kray et al, 2001), and poor performance relative to women can threaten men's sense of masculinity (Kray & Haselhuhn, 2012;Netchaeva, Kouchaki, & Sheppard, 2015).…”

High school experiences, the gender wage gap, and the selection of occupation

“…This empirical reality may be driven by a variety of causes (Kray, Galinsky, and Thompson, 2001;Kray, Kennedy, and Van Zant, 2014). For example, if women are treated differently than men when they attempt to negotiate, then this differential propensity to initiate negotiations could be a rational response to incentives (Bowles, Babcock, and Lai, 2007;Rudman et al, 2012).…”