Men Lie, Women Can’t Negotiate: What Does This Mean?
Sounds again like women have no other option than to be more like men to get ahead.
A very cryptic title, I know.
Do men lie? When, where, and why? Can women not negotiate? Why not?
More importantly: is there some nexus or connection between these two statements?
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Yes, it turns out, indeed, there is a connection, based upon some very interesting research published in the Harvard Business Review. And it has, perhaps, broad implications for conducting negotiations.
Men and women are different — very different — and men are winning, winning, winning.
I first saw a short article in the New York Law Journal last week by Vivia Chen, in which she began: “It pains me to say this, but men and women are different — very different — in how they approach negotiation. And guess what? Men are winning, winning, winning.”
Her article piqued my interest, so I dug up the study that she cited which was conducted by Professor Leigh Thompson of Northwestern U. (with Jason Pierce of the U. of North Carolina). The findings were perhaps not so surprising, but the conclusions drawn could be significant.
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The likelihood of unethical negotiating behavior is related strongly to gender.
The study “found that the likelihood of engaging in unethical behavior during negotiation is related strongly to gender: men are more likely to act deceptively than women are.”
That’s quite an indictment. Any support for this?
She states:
Substantial research shows that men set lower ethical standards for themselves, including in bargaining situations: they lie more frequently in negotiation than female counterparts, are more likely to believe misrepresentation is acceptable, and endorse seeking negotiation-related information in unscrupulous ways (such as looking at confidential reports not intended for them).
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She attributed “the difference in bargaining behavior” to “negotiators’ sense of competitiveness and empathy. In negotiations, men tend to embrace a competitive mode that motivates unethical behavior to get ahead, whereas women opt for an empathic approach, leading to less deceptive behavior.”
That’s quite a broad statement, and taken broadly, does that include behavior in the entire capitalist system? Is the unethical behavior in our economic system which we see so often linked to the competition and “rugged individualism” (as my high school history teacher called it) inherent in male hegemony?
I thought so. So much for Ayn Rand.
But Professor Thompson’s study veers away from such global and historical concerns, and focuses on negotiations. She says that “even the most qualified, elite professional women … fared worse than their male counterparts at the bargaining table. They didn’t go after favorable terms in the same way as men. …” She claims that this may explain gender pay disparity.
So how to make women better at negotiating? Cynical hint: women must be trained to act more like men, i.e., more competitive, and therefore more unethical.
Last week, I concluded pessimistically that women in the law — including judges — have to talk more like men to be heard. Now, it turns out from this study, women may have to lie as much as men to better negotiate.
Great.
It is simple to activate competitiveness and empathic motives.
But wait! These behaviors can be changed — the professor claims that “it turns out it is startlingly simple to ‘activate’ the competitiveness and empathic motives. And, when we activate these different motives, both women and men act more like the other gender in bargaining situations.”
So, we can actually activate everyone to become unethical? What an achievement!
But what if we activate everyone to be more empathic…
Anyway, she details experiments which she conducted which, instead of looking at self-reports of attitudes, dealt with behavior associated with unethical negotiating. She initially found that “Of our male participants, 44 percent lied; only 29 percent of the women did,” and “men scored higher on competitiveness, while women reported greater empathy levels. …”
Not so surprising, I guess.
She then tried to see if she could increase unethical behavior: she introduced into the experimental mix “competition-inducing instructions, framing the activity as an ‘ultimatum game’ played against an opponent, with clear ‘winners’ and ‘losers.’” And voila, “64 percent of men and 61 percent of women lied to get ahead, compared to only 49 percent and 23 percent, respectively.”
She did it! She made the women more unethical!
Could she do the opposite — and make the men more “empathic?” That seems key.
Yes! She did that too!
She introduced a “high-empathy condition” in her experiments — participants were told that the other side “participated in such experiments to buy treats for their grandchildren, while living off their limited retirement income.” Guess what? “[O]nly 22 percent of men acted unethically, and 16 percent of women, suggesting the empathy we induced led to fairer behavior.”
So she was able to make men more empathic — but what does all this mean? Especially for those of us who negotiate for a living? Do we want to be more empathic, even if we want to be more ethical? Is that a good strategy?
Professor Thompson concludes that the context of the situation is critical: “even simple changes greatly narrowed the gender gap for behavior, making women act much more like men in negotiation, and vice-versa. The needle moved more toward ethical or unethical behavior, depending on the circumstances.”
She has two takeaways — one for men and one for women.
For men: they “may benefit from understanding their competition-fueled tendency toward misrepresentative behavior and appreciating its real-life implications. Any ill-gotten win may come at some real cost for others.”
For women: “we will often find ourselves in situations—negotiations or otherwise—where a sense of empathy motivates fair, ethical behavior that might not be reciprocated by those across the table from us. Be prepared and vigilant about this reality, and keep in mind that certain cues (such as framing a discussion as a competition, even if just to yourself) may unleash your inner tiger.”
Great, again. I don’t know that many male lawyers who will reject “any ill-gotten win” simply because it “may come at some real cost for others.”
And unleashing the tiger in women — well, sounds again like women have no other option than to be more like men.
As Chen noted in the NYLJ: “[t[he sad truth is that it’s probably up to women to wise up to the darker art of negotiation.”
My Takeaway
I still have a takeaway today, and it is a quote from Professor Thompson — perhaps the only heartening one:
More generally, taking steps to reduce competitiveness and enhance empathy in negotiations or other professional settings may increase collaboration and joint problem-solving. When we see ourselves as participants in mutually beneficial interactions, it’s more likely we’ll all come out winners.
We’ll all come out winners! If only.
Richard B. Cohen has litigated and arbitrated complex business and employment disputes for almost 40 years, and is a partner in the NYC office of the national “cloud” law firm FisherBroyles. He is the creator and author of his firm’s Employment Discrimination blog, and received an award from the American Bar Association for his blog posts. You can reach him at Richard.Cohen@fisherbroyles.com and follow him on Twitter at @richard09535496.
