When Women do Ask, Does Curiosity Help?

This research examines the role of curiosity as a potential buffer to the backlash women experience when they ask. Asking (initiating negotiations in distributive agentic settings) can have negative social consequences for women, lead to worse objective outcomes, and can ultimately discourage negotiations in the first place. We propose that asking with curiosity in a negotiation will diminish the backlash women experience and enhance their social and negotiation outcomes compared to asking directly without curiosity. We test our predictions with two experiments in different negotiation contexts.