Okay, so we have men negotiating a lot more than women. Is that really always the case, or just in salary negotiations? >> Well it's a great question. It's not always the case. There are situations in which women negotiate more than men. So, let me give you an example from my research. We had undergraduate students come into our lab and we told them that they were either gonna negotiate a contract with a caterer. >> Okay. >> Or they were going to listen to annoying sounds. And these were nails on a chalkboard, these were not pleasant. Okay, and we were watching to see which one they chose to do. And we presented it as you were gonna negotiate the payment plan with the caterer, what we found is that men wanted to do the payment plan, negotiate that. But the women wanted to listen to nails on a chalkboard. When we did it with, you could either negotiate with the caterer, and it was about the flowers that would be at the party. >> Okay. >> Or listen to nails on a chalkboard, it was actually the men that wanted to listen to the annoying sounds. And the women who wanted to negotiate. >> So men don't like negotiating over flowers, but when it comes to salary, that's perfectly happy. >> That's right, and women aren't as happy negotiating about money, but they will negotiate about flowers, and it really depends upon what the perceived masculinity or femininity of what people are negotiating about, and that tends to predict who negotiates. >> Okay now, I'm hoping perhaps naively that this new generation, this next generation of women will perhaps be a little bit tougher and more willing to negotiate. Is there hope for that? >> Well many people think that maybe it's just an issue with our generation, that women of my age and men of your age would, negotiate differently. But, unfortunately, it's also true with the younger generations, because the studies that I told you about used young men and women in their late teens and early twenties, and we were seeing enormous gaps in who negotiated in that population, so unfortunately, the news is not as good as we would like. >> That's a bit disappointing, I was hoping that the next generation would more naturally come to this. But I guess it just means more people should be watching this video. Why do you think that is? Why is it that somehow women feel less comfortable, or the next generation feels less comfortable about negotiating? >> Well, that’s a great question, and there really two reasons why women don’t negotiate as much as men, and the first reason really has to do with this picture. And that is, we treat our little boys in the hospital, when they're born, with the blue hats, differently than the little girl babies with the pink hats, we treat them differently from the first day of life. So researchers have looked at how parents look at their children on that day one of their birth. And parents of little boys believe that their children are stronger, more coordinated, more alert, than the parents of the girl children. And the parents of the girl children, believe that their kids are more fragile, and more needy. Than the parents of the boy children. And so we treat these kids differently from the first day that they're born. You could also think about the messages that they get from movies and from TV. So if you think about the things that kids watch on Saturday morning TV. >> Sure. >> 18% of the major characters are female characters on TV. 82% are male characters. And what our boys and girls are learning is that the world revolves around boys, it's about what boys do, and girls realize that they're not in charge. >> It's also about the chores that our kids receive. So parents tend to give girls and boys different chores around the house. So a girl will be given small chores that she does every day like doing the dishes or setting the table. And because of these short chores, the mother may not say here's a quarter go set the table, but for a boy typically given chores that take him outside the house and that are longer, and so a parent will usually pay a boy for those chores, like to rake the leaves or shovel the snow. >> And that might even lead to a negotiation over how much I wanna get paid for doing this. >> Exactly. And so by the time that these boys and girls enter the labor market, boys are used to understanding the value of their work and what they ought to be paid. And girls are used to thinking about that their work is for love, it's for the family. And so they have a harder time negotiating later on in life. The second reason why women don't negotiate as much as men, has to do with how people react to them when they negotiate. So, let me just show you an example from my research. So, we had people watch videos of men and women either negotiating or not, and people rated them about whether they would wanna hire the person. You can see from the bars on the left-hand side of the chart that there wasn't a big difference between how people rated men when they negotiated versus when they didn't negotiate. They liked them equally as well and were equally likely to hire them. But you can see the two bars on the right are very different for women. That is people like the women a lot when she didn't negotiate. But liked her much less well and we're less likely to hire her when she did negotiate. And so really that's one reason why women hold back from negotiating is they worry about the negative response that might happen if they negotiate. And that keeps them from doing so. Because of this different reaction that people have to men who negotiate versus women who negotiate. Men and women have very different emotional responses to thinking about negotiations. So a researcher asked people to describe situations that negotiation was like, and men tended to choose situations like winning a ball game. Something that might be really fun. And women had very different emotional reactions. They chose situations like going to the dentist, which can be very anxiety provoking. And women do have much more anxiety about negotiating than do men.
