Understanding and Reducing Racial Gaps and Disparities in Negotiations, Organizations, and Conflict Settings

Abstract: This symposium focuses on understanding and reducing racial gaps and disparities in negotiations, organizations, and conflict settings. Our first paper shows that, in online job negotiations where applicants negotiate hourly wages, negotiators’ outcomes are 9% lower if they are non-White (vs. White), because employers treat identical information from non-White (vs. White) negotiators very differently; e.g., a +1 standard-deviation increase in job-relevant skills is linked to +6% (vs. +1%) higher outcomes for White (vs. non-White) negotiators. Our second paper notes that, despite East Asians’ educational and economic achievements in the U.S., they are underrepresented in leadership partly because their verbal unassertiveness is culturally incongruent with the American leader prototype. A preregistered, 3-wave longitudinal field experiment tested whether a 9-week debate training could empower Asian employees’ leadership advancement by improving their assertiveness. Our third paper analyzes how fatal police shootings in the U.S. influence prosocial behavior by 14,383 volunteer crisis counselors over five years (n=28,262,595 volunteer-days). Fatal police shootings reduce prosocial behavior; this effect is 16 times larger when the victim of the shooting is Black (vs. non-Black). Our fourth paper notes that meritocracy requires outcomes be determined by individuals’ efforts; people discriminate the more internally controlled they believe a characteristic to be (e.g., weight). However, meritocracy also requires relevance–that individuals’ relevant efforts matter. Across 9 studies, relevance beliefs affect people’s discrimination (race, disability, age) and competitive (ingratiation, name dropping) behaviors. This symposium will generate insights into the antecedents and consequences of racial gaps and disparities, and how to reduce them.

Keywords: race, negotiations, organizations, conflict management