As parents and teachers know, children can be excellent—even formidable—negotiators when they want something. At what age do kids start to develop negotiating skills? How effectively do they negotiate? And do gender differences emerge in negotiation behaviors at an early age? The answers to such questions can help us better understand not only children’s negotiation behavior but perhaps also how our childhood experiences affect how we negotiate today.
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How Good Are Children at Value Creation?
One of the keys to negotiation effectiveness is understanding that you and your counterpart likely value resources differently and can probably benefit from these differences. Take the classic negotiation scenario of two sisters who are arguing over who should get the last orange in the kitchen. Eventually, they cut the orange in half. As it turns out, one sister wanted to drink orange juice, while the other wanted the rind for a cake. If they had only uncovered this difference by sharing their underlying interests with each other, they each could have gotten what they wanted, instead of just half an orange.
How good are children at identifying differences and capitalizing on opportunities to enlarge the pie of value? University of Chicago researchers Radhika Santhanagopalan, Boaz Keysar, and Katherine D. Kinzler explored this question in a 2022 study.
In one experiment, the researchers showed children in the United States and India a video in which two people discussed why they each wanted a single orange. The children learned that one person wanted to make juice, while the other wanted the rind to make a cake. The children were then asked what the two people in the video should do with the orange.
By age five, children in both the United States and India were able to “make efficient resource allocation decisions based on . . . underlying interests,” the researchers report. That is, they recognized that one person should get the juice and the other should get the rind. The majority of the children in India reached this developmental milestone at age three or four, while the children in the United States tended to reach it around age five.
Beyond Oranges: Enlarging the Pie of Value
In other experiments, children from both countries engaged in an online negotiation where they were asked to distribute pieces of candy—chocolates and gummies—to two other children (and not to themselves). When the other children had absolute preferences—that is, one of them liked chocolate and not gummies, and the other liked gummies and not chocolate—children as young as three distributed the candy efficiently, giving each child their preferred candy.
In the relative-preferences condition, participants were told that both children liked both types of candy, but one liked gummies more and the other liked chocolate more. Children as young as five took these relative preferences into account—for example, giving three gummies and one chocolate to the gummy-loving kid and three chocolates and one gummy to the kid who liked chocolates more. Here again, the children in India were more attuned to others’ preferences from a younger age than those from America.
In other experiments, children were asked to allocate actual candy between themselves and another child. When their counterpart liked one type of candy but not the other, the kids in the United States made more self-interested choices than those in India. For example, if an American kid knew that his negotiating partner liked chocolate but not gummies, he might still choose the chocolate for himself, even if he also liked gummies.
By comparison, children over age four in India were more apt to consider their partner’s likes and dislikes: They “generally gave themselves the less preferred candy and gave [the other child] the preferred candy,” the researchers write. This negotiation behavior might be due to “differences in perspective-taking abilities, cultural norms, and even underlying differences in conceptions of fairness and goal pursuit,” according to the authors. In particular, in collectivist cultures such as India (as compared to individualistic cultures like the United States), negotiators may be more focused on building trust in negotiations through concessions in the hopes of triggering a similar kindness at a later date.
Negotiating Bonuses from an Early Age
In a 2025 study, researchers Sophie H. Arnold and Andrei Simpian of New York University and Katherine McAuliffe of Boston College looked at whether some of the gender differences that have been documented in negotiation behavior and outcomes might emerge in youth. Specifically, would girls be more reticent than boys about negotiating on their own behalf?
In an experiment conducted on Zoom, children aged 7–12 were asked to identify a series of images as quickly and accurately as possible. After completing the task, they were told that as a reward for their performance, they could see some funny pictures. They were asked how many pictures they thought they should get to see. The boys asked for a bigger bonus (more pictures) than the girls did. This may have been in part because the boys thought they did better on the task than the girls did; in fact, they performed about the same.
From these and their other results, the researchers conclude, “perhaps the gender gap in adults’ negotiation behavior does not stem as much from women’s reluctance to initiate negotiation or ask for large amounts when they negotiate but rather from men’s greater comfort with pushing the boundaries of acceptable behavior to maximize their gains.”
In sum, children’s negotiation behavior reveals that cultural differences, gender differences, and the ability to create value start to appear at a young age.
What have you noticed about children’s negotiation behavior?
Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills
Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
