UC Berkeley

Gender and objective value in negotiations have been studied extensively since the 1970s. However, gender differences in subjective value have received little to no attention, despite subjective value being more predictive of future economic outcomes. Across multiple samples, I find that negotiators prefer women as negotiation partners in terms of subjective outcomes. I find negotiators have more positive overall evaluations of women, which predicts a greater desire for future interaction with women negotiation partners. I also find this to be true when negotiations are anonymous, and individuals therefore cannot infer the gender of their partner. Follow-up testing shows that this is not due to individuals being able to infer their counterpart’s gender from online conversations. I also find no gender difference in objective outcomes. Structural topic modeling suggests several partner gender differences in negotiation behavior which may explain this negotiation partner gender gap in subjective value. I then leverage the stereotype content model to examine perceptions of men and women negotiators, and whether gender differences in warmth and/or competence contribute to this gender gap.