New Study Finds Gender Gap in Children’s Negotiation Behaviors

A new study by psychology researchers highlights a significant gender gap in children’s negotiation behaviors, with boys asking for higher rewards than girls despite similar task performance. These findings could shed light on professional wage disparities seen in adulthood.

A new study led by New York University has revealed a significant early-life factor contributing to the gender wage gap observed in professional settings. Conducted by a team of psychology researchers, the study found that boys tend to ask for higher bonuses than girls in negotiation scenarios, despite performing similarly in cognitive tasks.

The research, published in the journal Developmental Psychology, sheds light on the origins of gender disparities in negotiation that often surface in professional environments.

“Our findings suggest that boys tend to overestimate their abilities compared to girls — and relative to their actual performance,” lead author Sophie Arnold, a doctoral student at NYU, said in a news release. “This inflated self-perception may lead boys to feel more entitled to push the boundaries during negotiations.”

NYU psychology professor Andrei Cimpian, the senior author of the paper, underscores the broader implications of these findings.

“These findings offer new perspectives on the possible origins of negotiation disparities that exist between adult men and women in professional settings,” he said in the news release.

To unravel these early negotiation behaviors, the team conducted a series of experiments involving children aged six to nine.

In the first two experiments, they assessed boys’ and girls’ perceptions of negotiation through hypothetical scenarios, including negotiating a bonus with a teacher for classroom work or with a neighbor for completing neighborhood tasks.

Both boys and girls showed similar attitudes towards negotiation, perceiving it as equally permissible and likely to yield positive outcomes.

However, the critical insight emerged from the third experiment, which included over 200 child participants.

When asked to identify images quickly on a computer screen, boys and girls performed at comparable levels. Despite this, when asked how many bonus pictures they deserved as a reward for their performance, boys consistently requested more than girls.

This gap was significantly evident, with boys asking for higher bonuses than about 65% of the girls.

The study suggests that these differences are partly driven by boys’ higher self-perception of their abilities. Even without a difference in actual performance, boys believed they performed better, which led them to negotiate for more.

“Boys leveraged their perceptions of how common and permissible it is to ask for more, while girls did not,” added co-author Katherine McAuliffe, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College. “This meant that, for example, when both girls and boys thought it was more common and more permissible to negotiate, boys negotiated more than girls did.”

These findings provide crucial insights into how gender disparities in negotiation behaviors develop and the potential long-term impacts on wage gaps and professional advancement. Understanding these early roots is vital for developing strategies to mitigate such disparities in the future.

This research highlights the necessity of addressing gender biases from a young age to pave the way for more equitable professional environments.