Trust in Negotiation: Does Gender Matter?

When deciding whom to trust in negotiation, we often fall back on gender and other stereotypes. But research on gender and trust in negotiation shows more nuanced results—findings that can help us balance the twin risks of trusting too much or too little.

By — on / Negotiation Training

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It can be difficult to assess whether to trust a counterpart in negotiation. As a result, we often fall back on unreliable information, such as gender stereotypes, when making trust-related decisions. Let’s review what we know about the link between gender and trust in negotiation, and then consider effective means of measuring and building trust in negotiation.

Gender differences in trust after a breach

In research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Michael P. Haselhuhn of the University of California, Riverside and his colleagues looked at whether there is a gender difference in people’s willingness to trust others following a trust violation.

Across their three experiments, women and men were similarly trusting of counterparts who had not given them reason to be distrustful. After a counterpart violated participants’ trust, however, women were more willing than men to trust the counterpart, especially following a promise to behave more honestly going forward.

Why? Consider that girls and women tend to be socialized to be warm and agreeable. In fact, “women—more so than men—are characterized by a desire to form and maintain relationships even at the expense of their personal well-being,” write the authors. They found in their study that female participants’ greater investment in relationships, relative to male participants, explained their greater willingness to look beyond a trust breach.

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The pros and cons of trust in negotiation

Is this tendency toward greater trust a liability for women in negotiation? It may depend on the context, according to the researchers.

In highly competitive negotiations, where deception is more common, negotiators tend to perceive women as more easily misled and also are more likely to deceive women than men, research by Laura J. Kray, Jessica A. Kennedy, and Alex B. Van Zant finds. Women could be “perceived as more gullible by others” and to be “at greater risk of exploitation than men” if they are more tolerant of trust violations, write Haselhuhn and his team. Thus, when negotiators are simply competing for the best deal, women may be at more risk for exploitation than men.

By contrast, in a more complex, collaborative negotiation, women’s greater trust may actually be an asset. “Women’s relatively persistent trust may enable them to overlook minor misunderstandings or initial competitive posturing and collaborate with the other party to reach a creative solution,” write Haselhuhn and his colleagues, “whereas men may lose trust quickly and be less willing to collaborate with a counterpart after a minor violation.”

Who seems more deserving of trust in negotiation?

Women tend to be more trusting after a trust violation than men, according to Haselhuhn and colleagues’ research. A related question is whether male or female negotiators tend to be trusted more by their counterparts.

Women tend to internalize moral traits more strongly than men and are less likely than men to morally disengage from unethical negotiating strategies, Kennedy, Kray, and Gillian Ku found in their research. They also found that women were significantly less supportive than men of unethical negotiating tactics. However, in one of their experiments, financial incentives to behave unethically eliminated this gender difference.

In addition, Kray, Kennedy, and Van Zant found a gender bias in negotiation: Study participants viewed deceiving a female counterpart to be less risky than deceiving a male counterpart. This was because they viewed women as less likely to detect the deception and, when they did detect it, less likely to confront it because of societal expectations that they appear warm.

“The balance of evidence suggests that women should be trusted more than men, particularly in strategic interactions such as negotiation,” concludes Haselhuhn in a chapter in the book Research Handbook on Gender and Negotiation. “However, there is little to indicate that women are actually trusted more.”

Key takeaways on gender and trust in negotiation

What can we learn from the research on gender and trust in negotiation? Overall, it’s quite nuanced, but here are some general takeaways:

  • Women may be more trusting in highly competitive, one-off negotiations than they should be, while men may be less trusting in more collaborative, ongoing negotiations than they should be.
  • Men may face a greater risk of violating their ethical standards in negotiation, but women also face this risk when they have financial incentives to do so.
  • Women may be more likely to be taken advantage of by unethical negotiators.

Awareness of these general tendencies can help us adjust our negotiating behavior, aiming to trust appropriately and live up to our own moral standards.

When deciding whether to trust a counterpart, aim for an objective approach rather than relying on gender stereotypes. Effective negotiation strategies include:

  • Take time to get to know your counterpart.
  • Research their reputation in the field, including speaking with their past negotiating partners.
  • Try low-risk attempts to gauge trust, such as hiring someone for a small project first.

What other advice do you have for gauging and building trust in negotiation?

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