谈判中的性别差异早在8岁时就出现了, 这一发现为女性在职场面临的工资差距提供了新的线索, 太阳城网赌平台合作实验室的一项新太阳城官网表明, 由心理学和神经科学副教授凯瑟琳·麦考利夫领导.

这项太阳城官网调查了240名4到9岁的男孩和女孩, 最近发表在《太阳城网赌平台》杂志上, found the gap appears when girls who participated in the study were asked to negotiate with a male evaluator, a finding that mirrors the dynamics of the negotiation gap that persists between men and women in the workforce.

The researchers say this study is the first to identify a gender gap in negotiation among children.

凯瑟琳·麦考利夫(李·佩莱格里尼饰)

“We found that—consistent with adult work—girls asked for less than boys when negotiating with a man,麦考利夫说. “当孩子们与女性谈判时,我们没有看到这种性别差异. 还有很多工作要做, but one thing this tells us is that we should be teaching young girls to advocate for themselves in the context of negotiation from as early as elementary school.”

The results point to a disparity that takes root in childhood which may help explain the well-documented gender gap in pay that separates women and men, 麦考利夫说, who co-authored the study with New York University graduate student Sophie Arnold, 花了两个暑假在麦考利夫的合作实验室工作, 哪个太阳城官网的是像公平这样的特质是如何在孩子身上发展的.

McAuliffe and Arnold say the findings reveal a need to determine if cultural signals sent to girls are to blame and whether there should be interventions in childhood to ensure that both girls and boys feel comfortable advocating for themselves, 不管和他们谈话的人的性别是什么.

“男孩和女孩在4到7岁之间的表现是一样的,阿诺德说。, whose work on the project became her undergraduate honors thesis at the University of Chicago. “But by age eight, we see girls are requesting less than boys when they are negotiating with a man. It’s not that girls are negotiating less overall—it’s only when children are negotiating with a man that we see these gender differences emerge.”

先前对成年人的太阳城官网发现了谈判中的性别差异, 但无法解释它们的起源, 作者说. The researchers tested children between the ages of four and eight to determine whether girls in the age range would negotiate differently than boys and whether girls, 像女人一样, 对男人的要求比对女人少吗.

“Although adult research supports the existence of gender differences in negotiation, 它无法揭示它们的起源. Learning when these gender differences emerge is imperative for understanding what individual and societal factors lead to these gender differences in adulthood,阿诺德和麦考利夫写道.

作者说,这些实验是基于现实世界的场景进行的. 在第一阶段, children completed a task and then were allowed to ask for as many stickers as they liked as a reward.  他们不知道, 评估员总是接受两个或更少贴纸的请求, 并且总是拒绝超过这个阈值的请求. 如果一项要求被拒绝,谈判将进入下一阶段.

在第二阶段, the evaluator explained the rules of negotiation to the children and spelled out how their next sticker requests could be handled in a way that highlighted the risk and reward inherent to negotiations.

One thing this tells us is that we should be teaching young girls to advocate for themselves in the context of negotiation from as early as elementary school.
心理学和神经科学副教授凯瑟琳·麦考利夫


The results revealed a significant interaction between age, participant gender, and evaluator gender. 女孩, the number of stickers initially requested decreased with age when the evaluator was a male. 当评估者是女性时,随着年龄的增长,女孩们要求更多的贴纸.

Boys, on the other hand, made requests that did not change with age or the gender of the evaluator.

在测量持久性方面, 协商长度的代理, the study found that girls’ persistence decreased with age when the evaluator was male, 但当评估者是女性时,这一结果与年龄保持一致. For boys, persistence did not change with age or depending on the gender of the evaluator.

“Our study is the first to show that gender differences in negotiation emerge in childhood,合著者写道. “Older girls in our paradigm differed from boys in how much they were willing to ask for from a male evaluator, 显示出与成年人惊人的相似. Girls are not asking for less from both evaluators but instead are negotiating less only with the male evaluator.”

“Our findings add negotiation to the list of early-developing gendered behaviors that may lead to and magnify the wage gap in adulthood,太阳城官网人员报告说.

McAuliffe said the next steps in this area of study include trying to determine why these differences emerge.

She and Arnold highlighted two potential avenues for future research: status and gender stereotypes. It could be the case that the gender differences observed in this study are not unique to gender but reflect a more general dynamic due to perceived status of social groups: Namely, that individuals perceived to be a part of a lower status group (in the United States, 关于性别, this would be girls or women) request less from individuals who are perceived to be part of a higher status group (men).

关于性别刻板印象, it could be that girls are adopting gender stereotypes about communality or modesty that in turn shape their behavior with men. More research is needed to understand how these avenues contribute to the development of gender differences in negotiation.

The challenge of the next steps in this research are clarifying exactly what explains the development of this behavior and trying to develop interventions that could help remedy the imbalance, 麦考利夫说.

麦考利夫最近被选为人类行为学 & 进化学会(HBES)早期职业奖, 根据HBES的说法, “recognizes excellent young scientists who have made distinguished theoretical and/or empirical contributions to the study of evolution and human behavior."

Ed Hayward | University Communications | 2021年3月