information and other externally set guidelines to set goals can improve
women’s negotiation results substantially.20 Rhonda is the manager of a
very successful mutual fund. After running this fund for almost ten
years, she concluded that she was being grossly underpaid. But when
she asked her boss for a salary increase, he turned her down. Rhonda
responded by researching what other top fund managers earned. When
she discovered that very few women had achieved her level of success,
she contacted several top male managers and asked what they were
paid. She then went back to her boss armed with this information. This
time, he granted her request. Now she’s the highest-paid fund manager
at the company.
Another one of Linda’s studies with Hannah Riley and Kathleen
McGinn suggests that the use of external guidelines not only increases
women’s goals and helps them achieve better negotiated settlements—
it may even eliminate the gender gap in outcomes. For this study, they
recruited undergraduates from the Boston area to participate in negotia-
tions and divided them into two groups. They gave one group a bottom
line—for sellers the minimum they could accept and for buyers the
maximum they could pay. They gave the other group both a bottom
line and a goal—an amount they were to shoot for in the negotiation.
Among the students who received just a bottom line (the bottom lines
given to men and women were identical), female buyers set less aggres-
sive goals than male buyers (10 percent less) and negotiated prices that
137
C H A P T E R 6
were 27 percent worse than those achieved by the male buyers. But
among those students who were provided with both bottom lines and
goals, there was no gender difference in negotiated prices.21 In other
words, gender differences in outcomes may be eliminated if male and
female negotiators are working toward identical goals.
This has two important implications. First, it points out the critical
role played by goals in causing gender differences. Second, it shines a
light on one way in which women can improve the results of their
negotiations—by spending more time researching aggressive yet poten-
tially obtainable goals before they begin.
The Rewards of Risk
If optimism is about how much we believe is available, risk-taking is
about “going for it”—taking a chance to get as much as we can—and
men seem to be more comfortable than women taking risks. Studies
that have included subjects from all over the world have shown that
women are less likely than men to engage in activities that involve phys-
ical risk.22 Men also score higher on “sensation-seeking” scales. These
scales (actually four subscales), developed by the psychologist Marvin
Zuckerman, measure: “thrill and adventure seeking” (a desire to partici-
pate in physical risk-taking activities); “experience seeking” (wanting
to pursue new and different experiences); “disinhibition” (interest in
pursuing hedonistic pleasure); and “boredom susceptibility” (a dislike
of dull and boring people, activities, or environments).23 Men score
higher than women in each category.
Men and women also approach activities involving social risk differ-
ently. Males are “more likely to see a challenge that calls forth participa-
tion” in a socially risky situation, according to the psychologist Eliza-
beth Arch, whereas females more commonly perceive such activities as
threatening and try to avoid them.24 Because negotiation by definition
contains the possibility of rejection or failure, it always involves a certain amount of social risk—making it potentially threatening to women.
Women’s fear that negotiating for what they want can damage their
relationships may also make negotiation seem socially risky to women.
Arch argues that women’s fear of taking social risks prompts them
to behave more cautiously than men. If this is true, their greater sense
of caution may prevent girls and women from breaking rules and chal-
lenging the status quo while they’re growing up. As a result, they may
138
L O W G O A L S A N D S A F E T A R G E T S
not discover that this kind of risk taking—and by extension any unsanc-
tioned approach to getting what they want (such as asking for some-
thing when it hasn’t been offered)—can be a successful strategy. Men’s
greater propensity to take risks may teach them, in contrast, that chal-
lenging the status quo and pushing their own agendas can work to their
advantage. Many women learn this lesson much more slowly, if at all.
One relatively new line of research suggests that men’s biology may
actually prime them to feel more comfortable taking risks. Several re-
cent studies have shown a correlation between testosterone levels in
men and dominance behaviors, for example. Dominance behaviors are
defined as actions designed to improve a person’s power, status, and
access to desirable rewards (material or otherwise).25 Men who receive
testosterone injections to treat a variety of medical conditions report
feeling more confident, aggressive, and ready to take risks immediately
after their treatment and for several days afterward—until their testos-
terone levels sink again.26 Testosterone levels in male athletes have also
been shown to rise before a competition,27 with some researchers sug-
gesting that this upsurge may increase an athlete’s readiness to take
risks,28 and others speculating that these elevated testosterone levels
may improve coordination, enhance mental functioning, and aid con-
centration.29 Studies have also shown that testosterone levels remain
elevated among “winners” but fall in “losers.”30 This suggests that when
risk taking is rewarded by success, men experience a biological reac-
tion—a sustained testosterone “high,” if you will—that promotes more
risk taking. Another study shows that the testosterone levels of men in
occupations that involve a lot of personal risk, such as actors, profes-
sional football players, and firefighters, tend to be higher than those of
men in professions that involve less personal risk, such as ministers
and doctors.31 Women also have testosterone in their systems (in much
smaller amounts), but researchers have not yet demonstrated any con-
sistent correlation between changes in women’s testosterone levels and
their behavior.32
Although a great deal of controversy surrounds this area of study, and
it’s important to remember that “correlation does not imply causation”
(there’s no proof yet that rises in testosterone under certain circum-
stances actually cause the behaviors observed), the link to negotiation is not hard to make. If the prospect of competition that is embedded in
any negotiation raises a man’s testosterone level, that rise in testosterone
may help him feel more confident about setting higher targets for the
negotiation and making a more aggressive first offer—taking greater
139
C H A P T E R 6
risks in order to get as much as h
e can. Once the negotiation has begun,
if a man is negotiating effectively, each perceived “win” in the interac-
tion may serve to keep his testosterone elevated, thus maintaining his
optimistic outlook, improving his cognitive functioning and concentra-
tion, and helping him continue to pursue a more aggressive target settle-
ment. A woman in the same situation, unaided by this biological “facili-
tator of risk,”33 may not only set a less aggressive target in the first place, she may also concede more rapidly if she fears that pushing for what
she wants is socially risky. Or she may concede more because the man
she’s negotiating with, urged on by the testosterone in his system, con-
tinues pushing for his goal much longer.
Just as excessive optimism can be problematic for men, however,
“testosterone-driven impatience may lead to poor decision-making,”34
which can leave men with bad agreements, with no agreements, or with
relationship problems created by their overly aggressive behavior.
The Confidence Gap
Women also set lower targets and settle for less in their negotiations
because they lack confidence in their ability to negotiate effectively.35
Assuming that they’re no good at negotiating, they conclude that they
won’t be able to attain higher goals.
Psychologists have demonstrated that the more self-confident people
feel about a particular task, the more likely they are to set high goals
for that task and persist in trying to achieve those goals. More self-
confident people stay in the game, that is, trying to find ways to get
what they want; less-confident people give up sooner.36 Lindsey, 41, a
research chemist, although quite successful, conforms to this pattern:
I get so nervous in negotiating that I capitulate very quickly. So, for
instance . . . when I took my previous job, I felt as though for form’s
sake . . . you shouldn’t take what you’re offered, you should always
ask for a little more. So . . . I go in there and say it, and the person
to whom I say it sits back and says, ‘Well, what do you mean by that?’
Or, ‘Are you saying blah, blah, blah?’ And then I find myself going,
‘Oh, never mind, I didn’t really mean it. I’m happy to have the job,’
or whatever. And I just capitulate so quickly after just making a show
of trying to get something, because . . . I’m not very good at profes-
sional negotiating.
140
L O W G O A L S A N D S A F E T A R G E T S
Lindsey’s lack of self-confidence prevents her from “sticking to her
guns” and holding out for what she wants.
In addition to limiting the goals women set for themselves, their lack
of self-confidence can undermine women’s efforts in another way. A
1983 study by the psychologists Debra Instone, Brenda Major, and Bar-
bara Bunker examined the interrelationships among self-confidence, in-
fluence attempts, and gender. They divided students into groups of four
and assigned one student in each group to supervise the other three
while they performed a set task. During this exercise, the researchers
observed the extent to which the “supervisors” attempted to influence
the productivity of their “workers” and the types of influence strategies
they used. Separately, the researchers also measured the supervisors’
self-confidence about their managerial ability using a simple five-point
scale. They found that the male “supervisors” felt more confidence in
their managerial ability than the women (the men’s average scores were
31 percent higher than the women’s)—and that the male “supervisors”
made more attempts than the female supervisors to influence the pro-
ductivity of their “workers.” Even more to the point, the higher the
supervisors scored on the self-confidence scale, the more frequently
they tried to influence the productivity of their workers. Had the male
and female supervisors had similar levels of self-confidence about their
managerial ability, this suggests, there would have been no difference
in the frequency of their influence attempts.37
How does this relate to negotiation? As we’ve already noted, negotia-
tion is essentially a mutual influence-attempt process—it’s all about try-
ing to influence another person or group of people to do something or
give you something you want. Since women as a group feel less self-
confident about their negotiating abilities, they not only attempt fewer
negotiations, they also try to influence the decision of the opposite ne-
gotiator fewer times: Their lack of confidence impels them to try only
once or twice to get what they want before conceding.
Lana, a trauma surgeon at a New York hospital and a friend of Lin-
da’s, applied for parental leave before the birth of her first child. The
hospital’s policy was to give new mothers six weeks of pregnancy
leave and then four additional months during which they were exempt
from working night and weekend shifts. But when Lana asked her de-
partment head for the leave, he said they were short-staffed and she
could only have two months off from night and weekend call. Having
asked once and been turned down, Lana wasn’t going to try again. She
thought she had no choice but to take the two months he’d offered and
141
C H A P T E R 6
then go back to her usual grueling schedule. Fortunately, she men-
was entitled to the full benefits stipulated by hospital policy. Lana went
back to her department head, tried again, and this time persuaded him
to give her the full four months off. Like many other women, Lana’s
lack of self-confidence, particularly around negotiating, had led her to
concede too soon.
Interestingly, however, the psychologist Ellen Lenney has found that
gender differences in self-confidence depend upon context and situa-
tion, with women’s perceptions of their ability more context-dependent
than men’s. This means that women’s feelings of self-confidence fluctu-
ate more than men’s in response to the specifics of a situation.38 Follow-
ing up on this research, the psychologists Sylvia Beyer and Edward
Bowden found that women tend to feel more self-confident about cer-
tain types of activities than others—and especially lack confidence
about activities that are strongly identified with men.39 Some researchers
believe that negotiation, particularly on one’s own behalf, is one of those
activities.40 This makes a lot of sense to us, since negotiation falls more
in line with social expectations for male behavior (being self-promoting
and aggressive) than with those for female behavior (being other-di-
rected and selfless). Not surprisingly, this is what Linda and her col-
leagues found in their web survey—that people’s estimations of their
own ability as negotiators differed noticeably by gender, with men rat-
ing their ability higher on average than women.41
Increasing Control
Is there hope? Are there ways for women to improve their self-confi-
dence around
negotiating—and achieve better outcomes? Although
very little research has been done on training or tactics that will improve
women’s negotiating results, one study offers some useful clues. After
demonstrating distinct gender differences in negotiated outcomes
among a group of MBA students, three professors of management, Cyn-
thia Kay Stevens, Anna Bavetta, and Marilyn Gist, explored whether
these differences could be eliminated by different types of training inter-
ventions.42 In the first stage of the study, the researchers gave a group
of students four hours of classroom training in useful tactics for salary
negotiations. Then they asked each student to negotiate a salary for a
hypothetical job. Confederates of the researchers played the role of a
142
L O W G O A L S A N D S A F E T A R G E T S
personnel director at a firm that wanted to hire the students, and all
the confederates used identical “scripts.” This was called the “baseline”
negotiation, and the researchers found that gender differences in goals
(men’s were higher) closely paralleled the gender gap in negotiated re-
sults (the men negotiated better salaries).
After this negotiation, the student subjects attended two more hours
of training, but this time they were separated into two groups. One
group attended a session about goal-setting while the other attended a
session about “self-management” techniques. The “goals” session
showed how the use of challenging goals can improve performance and
described ways to set appropriate goals for salary negotiations. The in-
structors did not tell the students what goals to set, however. They
merely taught them how to set aggressive goals and emphasized the
importance of doing so. In the other training session, students were
taught five “self-management” principles. These included anticipating
performance obstacles by identifying situations that might cause them
anxiety or stress and planning to overcome those performance obstacles
by developing strategies to deal with anxiety-producing situations. They
also included practicing their responses with a partner to build their
self-confidence. In addition, students were encouraged to set perfor-
mance goals by evaluating all potential outcomes and ranking their pri-
orities, identifying “giveaways,” and settling on targets as well as “re-