Self-Affirmation as Strategy for Reducing Gender Effects on Negotiation with Chiara Trombini

Women face serious obstacles on the road to success. Despite reporting the same career aspirations and ambitions, women are underrepresented at the top and tend to be less satisfied with their careers than men. Women make up 44% of S&P 500 companies, but only 25% of corporate boards and only 6% of CEOs. Gender discrimination accounts for a large part of this discrepancy: certain attributes that are considered essential for career advancement are stereotypically male, and professional women face backlash when they display these traits.

How do men react to the prospect of working with agentic women in male-dominated environments, and how can we make men more willing to work with agentic women? The final WAPPP seminar of the year figured Chiara Trombini, AY’17 WAPPP Fellow, as she presented three studies on this line of research.

Why focus on men evaluating agentic women in male-dominated environments? Gender differences are more likely to emerge in male-dominated environments, and women are evaluated more harshly when they occupy male-dominated roles, exhibit stereotypically male attributes, or are evaluated by men. In particular, women face a competence-likability double bind: either they are well-liked but considered incompetent, or are competent but socially unattractive and therefore less worthy of hiring or promotion.

Is there a way to overcome the “threat” posed by agentic women? Chiara argues that self-affirmation is one way to reduce backlash and promote gender equality. Self-affirmation is when individuals reflect on values that are personally relevant to them. Self-affirming individuals are less likely to experience distress, less likely to react defensively, and are more likely to be objective in their decisions and less likely to rely on stereotypes. From a cognitive perspective, self-affirmation is effective at reducing the effects of prejudice and stereotypes, makes individuals more likely to accept threatening information and modify their behavior in response to threat, and increases concession-making and openness to compromise in negotiations.

How can self-affirmation reduce backlash? The mechanism lies in men’s emotional response to agentic women. Men dominate the current gender system and are sensitive and responsive to threats to their masculinity. When gender status is uncertain or challenged, men experience anxiety and react aggressively. There is some evidence that self-affirmation reduces cortisol levels and may be able to reduce stress and anxiety responses in these situations.

Chiara hypothesized that self-affirmation would make individuals less likely to rely on stereotypes and prejudices, so men who practiced self-affirmation would be more willing to work with agentic women and would feel less anxious at the prospect of doing so. She presented three studies testing these hypotheses on self-affirmation and gendered backlash.

Study 1

In the first study, evaluators were asked to rank 11 values (sense of humor, politics, religion, creativity, etc.) in order of personal importance. In the self-affirmation condition, evaluators were asked to write why their most important value was important to them. In the control condition, evaluators were asked to write why their least important value could be important to someone else. Then, evaluators watched a job interview and evaluated an internal candidate for job placement. The measured variable was willingness to work with the candidate. As hypothesized, self-affirmation increased male evaluators’ willingness to work with agentic women.

Study 2

Study 2 followed the same design as Study 1, but included measures for negative trait perception (whether the evaluator found the candidate to be arrogant, greedy, etc.), level of anxiety, and neutral feelings. The findings from Study 2 replicated Study 1: evaluators were less willing to work with women than men overall, but self-affirmation increased general willingness to work with candidates and particularly increased men’s willingness to work with women. In addition, men in the self-affirmation condition had lower rates of negative trait perception and lower anxiety.

Study 3

Study 3 set out to evaluate whether anxiety decreases willingness to work with a job candidate. Participants were asked to evaluate a job candidate based on their behavior in a job interview after being exposed to a music clip designed to induce feelings of anxiety or feelings of calm – in this case, either the theme from Psycho or “Weightless” by Maroni Union. Evaluators then rated their current mood in terms of anxiety or calmness. In general, male evaluators were more willing to work with male candidates, and female evaluators were more willing to work with female candidates. Participants in the high anxiety condition were less willing to work with candidate across the board. In addition, male evaluators in the high anxiety condition were less willing to work with agentic women.

These studies lend a cognitive and affective perspective to examining the roots of gender discrimination in hiring. It appears that perception of negative traits and feelings of anxiety are wrapped up in hiring discrimination. Self-affirmation is a low-cost, powerful affirmation that can increase men’s willingness to work with women in male-dominated environments, which could ultimately reduce gender gaps in professional settings. Organizations could institute self-affirmation practices before hiring, promotion, and performance review decisions in order to alleviate gender discrimination and ensure that they are benefitting from the entirety of the hiring pool.

Are women more moral than men?

Are women more moral than men?

There have long been the stereotypes of the “nurturing mother” and the “strict father”. But what does this mean in more real circumstances?

Jooa Julia Lee, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, recently presented some of her work, with David Tannenbaum of UCLA, on just this subject. In “Gender and Moral Decision-Making,” she looked at how women and their decisions are perceived in society.

Off the bat, there’s the idea that when a white man is “agentic,” he’s seen as assertive, authoritative, ambitious and, fundamentally, a leader. But when a woman is agentic, she’s seen as bossy, aggressive and emotional. Accordingly, when people think of competent managers, they tend to think of males and masculinity. Women, meanwhile, are expected to be “communal”: empathetic, gentle, and compassionate.

Lee wondered whether these associations are driven by the actual decisions that leaders make---particularly when there’s a moral conflict between doing what’s best for the greater good (utilitarian choices) and doing no harm (neutral, deontological choices).

After a series of simulations and psychological tests, they found that when individuals were asked to suppress their emotions, they were more likely to make utilitarian decisions; that cognitive and emotional processes are in conflict when moral decisions need to be made.

How does this affect perceptions of gender? Well, when told about a hypothetical Mayor Edward Jones making massive lay-offs, people saw him as a decisive, moral leader who could make the best decision for the city. But when the name was changed and Mayor “Elizabeth” Jones made those same lay-offs, she was seen as an immoral, bad leader.

Because of these biased perceptions, female utilitarian decision-makers are not given as many leadership positions. To overcome this, Lee suggests that women use the system while advancing what needs to be done: blend agentic and communal leadership styles by making the tough, utilitarian decisions that must be made, while also being empathic and building strong relationships.





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How Does Media Bias Affect People's Perceptions?

In December 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was meeting with the press in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She had just spoken about the challenges of being female in legal practice, where women are often judged on more critical and superficial standards than are men.

A few minutes later, the moderator asked, with no irony, “so which [clothing] designers do you prefer?” The Secretary responded, “Would you ever ask a man that question?” before moving to the next question.

Media coverage of female politicians---with a focus on appearance, on “women’s issues” like education rather than economics, on communal rather than individual qualities---is clearly different than that of men. This week’s WAPPP Seminar speaker, Exploring Viewer Reactions to Media Coverage of Female Politicians, Joanna Everitt, a Dean at the University of New Brunswick and current WAPPP Visiting Fellow, explored the effects of that coverage on voter perceptions.

She starts with the assumption that, in many cases, media simply reflects cultural biases and stereotypes---rather than actually creating them. One of these is that politics is what men do; for women, playing that ‘power game’ is out of the ordinary.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm (2003–2011) speaking at 2012 DNC.

Professor Everitt and her colleagues broke down even visual cues into those that represent decisiveness and individual power---like up-and-down vertical hand motions---and those that represent communal inclusiveness---like horizontal hand gestures. (I bet you’re moving your hands right now; if not, try it. You’ll see what she means---plus it’s been confirmed by repeated social psychological tests).

The media even more subtly reflects some of these biases in how they present female candidates in short clips. Professor Everitt’s study played short videos of different politicians using ‘agentic’ versus ‘inclusive’ poses in front of 100 human lab rats (students that took part in surveys).

The result? There were no differences in whether the participants liked the candidates overall. But those male politicians that were shown using the up and down hand gesture were seen as more impressive, while those going side to side were less so. Female politicians were seen as more impressive and likable when they didn’t use expansive gestures and were actually less liked when they used the up and down hand gestures.

So what does that say about us as people? Sometimes women and men (of different races) succeed by ‘mastering’ and using some of the benefits of their own stereotypes. But is that good? Should we understand and master what is accepted---in a sort of social jiu-jitsu to get our work done? Or should we fight to effectively change what’s accepted? If so, how?

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