Men are Pigs, Part 487

I've long counseled women I know to be more aggressive when it comes
to negotiating salary and benefits on the job. My usual advice is,
"Honest, no one will think the worse of you for trying. The worst that
can happen is that they say no."

Sadly, Shankar Vedantam reports today on some recent research from
Linda Bab*** and Hannah Riley Bowles suggesting that that's not the
worst that can happen. It all depends on which gender you're
negotiating with:

http://tinyurl.com/34aa29

Their study...found that women's reluctance [to negotiate] was
based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were
likely to be treated if they did. Both men and women were more likely
to subtly penalize women who asked for more ? the perception was that
women who asked for more were "less nice".

"What we found across all the studies is men were always less
willing to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with
a woman who did not," Bowles said. "They always preferred to work with
a woman who stayed mum. But it made no difference to the men whether a
guy had chosen to negotiate or not."

....Subsequent studies used actors who recorded videos of
themselves asking for more money or accepting salaries they had been
offered. A new group of 285 volunteers were again asked whether they
would be willing to work with the candidates after viewing the videos.
Men tended to rule against women who negotiated but were less likely
to penalize men; women tended to penalize both men and women who
negotiated, and preferred applicants who did not ask for more.

So: if you're dealing with a man, negotiating puts you at a
disadvantage compared to men who are applying for the same position.
Your choice, then, is to either negotiate and risk not getting the job
at all, or to stay quiet and accept a lower offer than a man would
get. On balance, I think I'd still offer the same advice I always
have, since I suspect the downside of negotiating might be a fairly
short-term thing. Still, "the worst that can happen is that they say
no" is obviously a little too glib, especially if you're dealing with
a seething biological sack of testosterone on the other side of the
desk.

?Kevin Drum
.

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