Women’s performance at the bargaining table: Why stereotypically feminine negotiation topics may act against women

By: RIPS - IRSP Blog on 5:45 AM

     A widespread stereotype about women is that they are less performant at the bargaining table than men. For example, when it comes to vehicle purchases, popular wisdom suggests that women should be accompanied by a man at the concession so that they can be ‘taken seriously’ and can make a good deal. Indeed, the study of Ayres & Siegelman (1995) showed that car dealers offered women significantly higher initial and final prices than men, although the negotiators (men and women) used exactly the same scripted negotiation strategies. This shows that negotiation outcomes vary by gender in part because negotiation partners are influenced by expectations about the opponent. But, even assuming that they were not, women are still likely to be disadvantaged (compared to men) at the bargaining table because negotiation partners are also influenced by expectations about themselves—which, in this case, does not help women. Here, the widespread stereotype about women’s inferior negotiating ability may affect women themselves through a process called “stereotype threat” (Steele & Aronson, 1995). This phenomenon refers to the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about a stigmatized group due to awareness of the stereotype itself. As a woman, being aware that women are generally not considered as effective negotiators (less than men anyway) can increase performance impairment, even if the woman does not personally adhere to this stereotype.

Source: shutterstock

If this gender gap at the bargaining table seems deeply ingrained in the societal gender roles, one can wonder if such a phenomenon can be reduced (or even reversed) when the topic of the negotiation is typically feminine. Indeed, would a woman feel more expert and comfortable when negotiating feminine topics (compared to gender neutral ones), which would lead her to achieve better performances than men in these circumstances? Or would she perform worse in stereotypically feminine negotiations than in neutral ones? To examine this question, Demoulin and Teixeira (2016) designed an experiment, published in the International Review of Social Psychology, to analyze gender effects in negotiations involving typically female-related topics.

Gender effects in traditionally feminine negotiation tasks

        Fictitious negotiations were organized between a man and a woman who did not live in the same house and who were not in a romantic relationship with each other. For the stereotypically feminine condition, the authors used data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) regarding “Time used for work, care and daily household chores”—which revealed an asymmetry between men and women. Indeed, among the 18 founding countries of the OECD, women spend on average 15.8% of their time on household chores compared to 8% for men. In this case, participants had to imagine that they lived together with their negotiation partner. The negotiation consisted in sharing household duties. In the « gender-neutral » condition, participants had to imagine that they lived together with their negotiation partner and were part of the same association. The negotiation consisted in sharing the different tasks related to the organization of a debate for this association. A pre-negotiation questionnaire assessed first-offer intentions, participants’ aspirations and limits, and perceptions of the negotiation. Then, participants were given 10 minutes to negotiate with each other. Finally, participants filled a post-negotiation questionnaire designed to assess objective outcomes, satisfaction with the process and results, self- and other-stereotypes of warmth and competence, and demographics. The results showed that women had lower aspirations when negotiating a feminine topic, and consequently, were less performant than both men, and women who negotiated in the gender-neutral condition. In both negotiation contexts, women perceived their masculine negotiation partners as more competent than themselves, and perceived themselves as warmer than their partners (this was not observed for men).

Source: shutterstock

Gender gap in negotiation outcomes: Gender-specific social and psychological barriers

        Rather than an innate incapacity, women’s worse negotiation outcomes are largely attributable to a set of gender-specific psychosocial barriers. Indeed, according to the authors, the “feminine” negotiation topic would implicitly activate gender stereotypes—especially as the topic of household duties is likely to highlight gender discrepancies—and, in line with the stereotype threat phenomenon, generate performance impairment for women. Overall, this study leads us to consider the impact of gender differences and inequities that sustain institutionalized social practices: Gender is likely to affect how negotiators behave at the bargaining table. Ultimately, a negative stereotype regarding negotiation skills of women may impact negotiation over pay, workplace conditions, work-life balance, access to promotion, and can keep them from reaching leadership positions. Very concretely, the gender gap in negotiation may in part explain why women in the United States earned only about 77.4% of men’s median annual earnings in 2011, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The same goes in France: According to INSEE in 2013, at equal age, activity area, job and conditions of employment, men still earn 10% more than women.

Source: shutterstock    

References:

Ayres, I., & Siegelman, P. (1995). Race and gender discrimination in bargaining for a new car. The American Economic Review, 304-321.

Demoulin, S., & Teixeira, C. (2016). “I Do the Dishes; You Mow the Lawn”: Gender Effects in Stereotypically Feminine Negotiation Tasks. International Review of Social Psychology / Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale, 29(1). 

Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797.

-

To know more about Wage differentials between men and women in France: 

http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2015/09/22/salaires-les-ecarts-hommes-femmes-se-reduisent-sauf-pour-les-hauts-revenus_4767045_4355770. Html # 2ul2mAekdViXWi70.99

Related Topics published in the IRSP:

Find the special issue of the IRSP on “Stereotype threat in children: Past and present” on Cairn at: http://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-psychologie-sociale-2014-3.htm

Download the article of Demoulin & Teixeira from the link: 

http://www.rips-irsp.com/articles/10.5334/irsp.83/

-

Motives for the Acceptance of the Social Sharing of Positive and Negative Emotions and Perceived Motives of the Narrator for Sharing the Emotional Episode

By: RIPS - IRSP Blog on 6:54 AM

       People tend to feel the need to talk about their emotional experiences. This phenomenon is called the Social Sharing of Emotion. A research note recently published in International Review of Social Psychology offers a new perspective on social sharing of emotions by focusing not only on people who shared emotional experiences but also on those who listened, and in particular by trying to understand what may lead someone to accept the social sharing of emotion. In most cases, the narrator perceived the social sharing of his emotions as useful and beneficial (see Rimé, 2007). However, what about the listener? The study recently published in the IRSP originally investigates (1) why people listen and (2) what are their perceptions of the narrator’s motives.

Source: shutterstock

After recovering a recent situation in which participants listened someone’s emotional (positive or negative) episode, they were asked to list reasons (1) why they accepted the social sharing and (2) why they perceived that the narrator needed to speak with them. Results show that the acceptance of social sharing is principally predicted by the need to afford social support and preserve social relationship. However, depending on the valence of the emotional experiences (i.e., sharing of positive or negative emotions), different motives emerged. Indeed, for positive events, the categories bonding, empathy and information (i.e., being informed about what had occurred during the event) were the main reported motives. For negative events, the categories of emotional support and social support were the most frequently reported. The perceived motives for narrator’s sharing are mainly venting and bonding with the listener and did not differ on the whole for positive or negative events.

     Thus, this research provides new information about the operation of social interactions during social sharing of emotion. Indeed, according to the authors, people listen principally to reinforce relationship and to provide support in view of the perceived narrator’s needs to comfort, express emotion and avoid loneliness.

References :

Delelis, G. & Christophe, V., (2016). Motives for the Acceptance of the Social Sharing of Positive and Negative Emotions and Perceived Motives of the Narrator for Sharing the Emotional Episode. International Review of Social Psychology. 29(1), pp.99–104. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.4

Rimé, B. (2007). Interpersonal emotion regulation In: Gross, J. J. ed.  Handbook of emotion regulation. NY: Guilford Press, pp. 466–485.

Download the article of Delelis & Christophe from the link:

                                            http://www.rips-irsp.com/article/10.5334/irsp.4/

About the Charlies in the streets

By: RIPS - IRSP Blog on 5:12 AM

From the special collection of the International Review of Social Psychology on the social and political psychology of terrorism

Many tags as “We are Charlie”, “Never again”, “Freedom of speech”, “All united” could be read during the gathering of 4 million people all over France to mark the horror of January’s terrorist attacks—on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Paris Hyper Casher supermarket—that left 17 people dead. It was the largest French demonstration of national unity since World War II.
Soon, however, some doubts about the ‘real’ motivations of the Charlies in the streets began to emerge. Were they “good citizens" marching again racism, defending tolerance, and republican values? Or, were they rather implicitly demonstrating their rejection of Islam and Muslims, as suggested by the demographer Emmanuel Todd (2015)?

In his book “Who is Charlie? Sociology of a Religious Crisis”, Emmanuel Todd (2015) argued that the rallies were not what they appeared to be. Far from corresponding to the image of people standing together conveyed by the media, Todd thinks that the deeper motivations of the Charlies in the streets were islamophobic—although they publicly displayed antiracist attitudes. His massively contested and controversial book instantly became a bestseller, with more than 60 000 copies sold worldwide.

A special collection on the social and political psychology of terrorism was recently published in the International Review of Social Psychology (IRSP), with two articles focusing on what drove Charlie Hebdo’s marchers.

The Charlie Hebdo marchers explicitly displayed egalitarian values

The article of Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj (“Who were the « Charlie » in the streets? A socio-political approach of the January 11 rallies”) analyzed the socio-cultural, political, and ideological profile of the participants to the Charlie rallies through a large national survey. The research was conducted between March, 3 and 11, 2015, on a representative sample of 1040 French people. The results showed that those who participated in the rallies were mostly young, urban, educated, and leftwing citizens—which does not reflect the MAZ bloc (“Middle class, Aged and Zombies”; i.e., culturally catholic) described by Todd. The most inclined to join the Charlie Hebdo rallies were those with the lowest declared scores of islamophobia and xenophobia. In other words, those who had negative explicit attitudes toward Muslims and Islam participated less than those who had not.

There was no dissociation between implicit and explicit

In the same vein, Oulmann Zerhouni, Marine Rougier, and Dominique Muller (“"Who (really) is Charlie?" French cities with lower implicit prejudice toward Arabs demonstrated larger participation rates in Charlie Hebdo rallies ») questioned Todd’s assumption about the deeper motivations of the Charlie Hebdo’s marchers. Indeed, Todd’s hypothesis leads one to think that even if those marchers would publicly display antiracist attitudes, they were ultimately driven by islamophobic implicit attitudes (i.e., that were not part of their conscious experience), deriving from the Catholic background of the cities involved. Through the use of data on the French/Arab Implicit Association Test (IAT)—able to reveal subtle or implicit level of prejudice toward an outgroup—they tested whether implicit prejudice, measured at a city-level, could predict the participation rate observed in these same French cities. Their results showed that cities implicitly biased against Arabs (as compared with French) participated less, and not more, to the rallies. Importantly, highly culturally catholic cities did not provide higher IAT scores compared to cities with less or small Catholic background, which means that the larger participation observed in these cities cannot be attributed to anti-Arab prejudice.

In sum, in contrast to Todd’s claim, these two studies showed that those who participated to the rallies publicly displayed egalitarian values on the one hand, and that the cities who participated the most to the rallies showed less implicit xenophobic attitudes, not more, on the other hand. Thus, it seems that Todd’s argument about the “unconscious” drive deriving from historical and religious traditions of the people who joined the rallies is, one more time, being challenged.

-------

References 

Mayer, N., & Tiberj, V. (2016). Who were the «Charlie» in the Streets? A Socio-Political Approach of the January 11 Rallies [Qui étaient Les “Charlie” dans la rue? Approche Socio-Politique des Rassemblements du 11 Janvier]. International Review of Social Psychology, 29(1).

Todd, E. (2015). Who is Charlie? Sociology of a Religious Crisis [Qui est Charlie?: Sociologie d’une crise religieuse]. Paris: Seuil.

Zerhouni, O., Rougier, M., & Muller, D. (2016). “Who (Really) is Charlie?” French Cities with Lower Implicit Prejudice toward Arabs Demonstrated Larger Participation Rates in Charlie Hebdo Rallies [“Qui est (Vraiment) Charlie?” Les Villes Françaises à plus Faible niveau de Préjugés Implicites envers les Maghrébins ont davantage Participé aux rassemblements de Charlie Hebdo]. International Review of Social Psychology, 29(1).

-------

Read the summery of the special collection and download these (open-access) articles here: http://psysoc-bullhorn.blogspot.fr/2016/09/international-review-of-social.html#.V-puTjLpN1M

Learn more about the IRSP on the IRSP's website (http://www.rips-irsp.com) and blog (http://psysoc-bullhorn.blogspot.fr).

You can also receive the latest news of the journal by subscribing to the IRSP’s Facebook Page or Twitter account.

International Review of Social Psychology (IRSP): Special collection “ Je suis Charlie”: New findings on the social and political psychology of terrorism

By: RIPS - IRSP Blog on 7:13 AM

International Review of Social Psychology (IRSP): Special collection

“ Je suis Charlie”: New findings on the social and political psychology of terrorism

We are happy to announce a forthcoming special collection on the social and political psychology of terrorism in the International Review of Social Psychology (IRSP).

This special collection, edited by Armelle Nugier and Serge Guimond (Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive, CNRS-UMR 6024, Université Clermont Auvergne, France), takes an in-depth look at the psychological reactions to terrorism –with a special emphasis on the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Casher in Paris, France.

Summary of the special collection

IRSP is an open-access journal, and all articles are available via the website of the RIPS (http://www.rips-irsp.com/articles/). You can get more information by following the review on social media, or by visiting the blog of the journal (contacts below).

Nugier & Guimond
« Je suis Charlie »: new findings on the social and political psychology of terrorism (Introduction to the special issue): http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.60

Cohu, Maisonneuve, & Testé
The “Charlie-Hebdo” effect: repercussions of the January 2015 terrorist attacks in France on prejudice toward immigrants and North-Africans, social dominance orientation, and attachment to the principle of laïcité: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.59

Mayer & Tiberj
Who were the « Charlie » in the streets? A socio-political approach of the January 11 rallies: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.63

Zerhouni, Rougier & Muller
"Who (really) is Charlie?" French cities with lower implicit prejudice toward Arabs demonstrated larger participation rates in Charlie Hebdo rallies: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.50

Nugier, Roebroeck, Anier, Kleinlogel, Chatard, & Guimond
The psychological effects of terrorism are moderated by cultural worldviews: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.61

Pelletier & Drozda-senkowska
The Charlie Hebdo terror attack in Paris: Follow-up of french citizens' terrorist threat perception and its aftermath: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.51

About the journal

Founded in 1988, the IRSP has since published about a hundred issues. The IRSP publishes literature reviews, theoretical notes and empirical research in all areas of social psychology. The journal is fully peer-reviewed and is indexed by the following services: PsycInfo, Scopus, Web of Science, CrossRef, JISC KB+, SHERPA RoMEO, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and Google Scholar. In addition, all journals are available for harvesting via OAI-PMH.

The journal was previously published by the Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, with the journal transferring to the open access platform from Ubiquity Press in 2016. All content from this date can be accessed completely free of charge. Back content for this journal from 2015 and earlier can be found at https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-psychologie-sociale.htm

Contacts

Learn more about the IRSP on the IRSP's website (http://www.rips-irsp.com) and blog (http://psysoc-bullhorn.blogspot.fr).

You can also receive the latest news of the journal by subscribing to the IRSP’s Facebook Page or Twitter account.


------- [French Version] -------

Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale (RIPS): Numéro spécial
« Je suis Charlie » : Nouvelles Avancées en Psychologie Sociale et Politique du Terrorisme

Nous sommes heureux d'annoncer un numéro spécial à paraître sur la psychologie sociale et politique du terrorisme à la Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale (RIPS).

Ce numéro spécial est édité par Armelle Nugier et Serge Guimond (Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive, CNRS-UMR 6024, Université Clermont Auvergne, France) et s’intéresse aux réactions psychologiques provoquées par le terrorisme – en se centrant plus particulièrement sur l'attaque de Janvier 2015 à Charlie Hebdo et à l’Hyper Casher à Paris, France.

Sommaire du numéro spécial

La RIPS est un journal 100% open-access, tous les articles sont accessibles via le site Web de la revue (http://www.rips-irsp.com/articles/). Vous pouvez obtenir plus d’informations en suivant la revue sur les réseaux sociaux ou en consultant le blog de la revue (contacts ci-dessous).

Nugier & Guimond
« Je suis Charlie » : Nouvelles Avancées en Psychologie Sociale et Politique du Terrorisme (Introduction du numéro spécial) : http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.60 

Cohu, Maisonneuve, & Testé
L’effet « Charlie » : répercussions des attentats de Janvier 2015 en France sur les préjugés, l’orientation à la dominance sociale et le degré d’attachement au principe de laïcité : http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.59

Mayer & Tiberj
Qui étaient les « Charlie » dans la rue ? Approche socio-politique des rassemblements du 11 Janvier : http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.63

Zerhouni, Rougier & Muller
« Qui est (vraiment) Charlie ? » Les villes françaises à plus faible niveau de préjugés implicites envers les maghrébins ont davantage participé aux rassemblements de Charlie Hebdo : http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.50

Nugier, Roebroeck, Anier, Kleinlogel, Chatard, & Guimond
Les effets psychologiques du terrorisme sont modérés par les normes culturelles : http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.61

Pelletier & Drozda-senkowska
L’attaque terroriste de Charlie Hebdo à Paris : Évolution temporelle de la perception de la menace terroriste et de ses conséquences auprès des citoyens français : http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.51

A propos de la revue

Créée en 1988, la RIPS a publié près d’une centaine de numéros. La RIPS publie des synthèses critiques, des notes théoriques et des recherches empiriques dans tous les champs de la psychologie sociale. Les expertises des textes proposés sont réalisées par un comité de lecture international. La revue est indexée dans les bases suivantes : PsycInfo, Scopus, Web of Science, CrossRef, JISC KB+, SHERPA RoMEO, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), et Google Scholar. Par ailleurs, toutes les revues rentrent dans le cadre de l'Initiative des Archives Ouvertes (OAI-PMH).

Avant Janvier 2016, la RIPS était publiée par les Presses Universitaires de Grenoble. Tous les articles publiés avant cette date peuvent être retrouvés à l’adresse : https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-psychologie-sociale.htm
La revue a été transférée sur la plate-forme Ubiquity Press en Janvier 2016. Tous les articles publiés à partir de cette date sont entièrement accessibles gratuitement.

Contacts

Pour en savoir plus sur la RIPS, vous pouvez visiter le site internet (http://www.rips-irsp.com) et le blog de la revue (http://psysoc-bullhorn.blogspot.fr).

Vous pouvez aussi souscrire à la Page Facebook ou au compte Twitter de la revue.