Beliefs about Gender Differences in Negotiation: Avoiding Backlash or Proving One’s Manhood?

Gender differences in negotiation are typically explained by processes that concern women (e.g., women anticipate backlash for assertive behavior). Research has begun to suggest that processes that concern men (e.g., men want to be seen as “real” men) also help to explain gender differences. However, these approaches typically remain disconnected. We integrated the different processes in an exploratory study of people’s beliefs about the causes of gender differences in negotiation (N = 200). People’s beliefs are an important source of information because they are often based on actual events. Contrary to the prevailing explanation that focuses on processes that concern women, people believed more strongly in processes that concern men as underlying gender differences in negotiation—an effect that was large on average (d = 0.89). The effect was observed irrespective of a number of different boundary conditions (e.g., people’s gender or their level of negotiation experience).