A Contextual Perspective on Gender and Negotiation

在过去的二十年里，社会心理学对性别、认知和社会行为之间关系的研究出现了一个高潮。在同一时期，关于谈判中的性别的研究有所减少。与社会心理学从性别作为人格变量的测试到语境中的性别调查的运动相反，谈判领域已经在很大程度上放弃了性别变量作为谈判者行为或表现的不一致预测因素。在本研究项目中，我们认为性别在谈判文献中大多被视为一个静态的、去语境化的人口变量，我们尚未理解性别作为谈判中一个不稳定但有影响力的心理结构的复杂本质。我们的重点是情境因素和心理过程，调解性别和谈判之间的关系。因此，我们开始回答“在什么条件下以及为什么性别在谈判中很重要？”我们在这项研究中作为一个中心命题，性别影响在不同情况下不是不变的；相反，我们强调性别是一种“情境依赖现象”。我们研究了情境因素，如情境强度、性别与谈判者角色的相关性和显著性，或正在分配的资源类型，如何激活基于性别的不同期望、认知和行为。在第一组研究中，我们提供了初步的实验室证据，证明情境因素在调节谈判结果的性别差异中所起的作用。我们提出了一系列新的实验来进一步探索这些情境调节因子，重要的是，开发消除性别差异的干预措施。我们在这项研究中的目标是进一步阐明导致性别在谈判中起作用的心理机制，并提出实用的建议，帮助女性改善谈判结果。在第二组研究中，我们把注意力转向一个研究甚少的领域- -谈判的开始。我们开发了一个决定启动谈判的两阶段模型。利用初步实地研究的数据，我们发现女性不太可能发起谈判，我们模型中的心理过程有助于解释在发起谈判方面的整体个体差异和性别差异。我们提出了一项新的实地研究和一系列的实验室实验，以进一步调查谈判启动中性别差异的语境调节因素。

Over the last two decades, there has been an upsurge in research in social psychology on the relationships among gender, cognition, and social behavior. Over the same period, studies of gender in negotiation have declined. In contrast to the movement in social psychology from tests of gender as a personality variable to investigations of gender in context, the negotiation field has largely abandoned the gender variable as an inconsistent predictor of negotiator behavior or performance. In this research program, we argue that gender has mostly been treated as a static, decontextualized demographic variable in the negotiation literature, and that we have yet to understand the complex nature of gender as a labile yet influential psychological construct in negotiation. Our focus is on the situational factors and psychological processes that mediate the relationship between gender and negotiation. We thus begin to answer the questions "under what conditions and why does gender matter in negotiation?" We take as a central proposition in this research that gender effects are not invariant across situations; rather we emphasize that gender is a "context-dependent phenomenon." We investigate how contextual factors, such as the strength of the situation and the relevance and salience of gender to negotiator's roles or the type of resource being distributed, activate distinct gender-based expectations, cognitions, and behavior. In the first set of studies, we present preliminary laboratory evidence about the role the situational factors play in moderating gender differences in negotiation outcomes. We propose a series of new experiments to further explore these contextual moderators and importantly, to develop interventions that eliminate gender differences. Our goals in this research are to further illuminate the psychological mechanisms that cause gender to matter in negotiations and develop practical advice that can help women improve their negotiated outcomes. In the second set of studies, we turn our attention to a greatly understudied area - the initiation of negotiations. We develop a two-stage model of the decision to initiate a negotiation. Using data from a preliminary field study, we find that women are less likely to initiate negotiations and that the psychological process in our model help to explain the overall individual differences as well as gender differences in initiating negotiations. We propose a new field study and a series of laboratory experiments to further investigate the contextual moderators of gender differences in the initiation of negotiations.