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When Women Ask, Does Curiosity Help?

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Alexandra Mislin the potential social benefits of displaying curiosity during a negotiation.

Image courtesy of interviewee. April 30, 2024

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This video video discusses research focused on the challenges women face in negotiation settings, particularly regarding salary negotiations. It highlights that women can experience backlash for negotiating assertively, which may lead to negative perceptions and decreased willingness from others to collaborate with them.

In response, researchers explored whether adopting a strategy of "social curiosity" could help women navigate these challenges effectively. Social curiosity emphasizes showing interest in the other party's needs and behaviors during negotiations, which could counteract the negative effects typically associated with assertive negotiations.

The research involved three studies. The main predictions were that women who negotiate with curiosity would be perceived more positively and achieve better negotiation outcomes. The studies found that engaging in curiosity led to positive social perceptions, greater willingness to work with the negotiator, and better economic outcomes without the typical negative fallout associated with self-interested behavior.

Additionally, the studies suggested that women felt more comfortable using a curious approach compared to a direct asking strategy, which could alleviate anxiety about potential backlash. The findings indicate that curiosity benefits all negotiators and may help women overcome apprehensions associated with negotiation contexts traditionally viewed as masculine.

Overall, the research suggests that curiosity can be a valuable strategy for women in negotiations and encourages further investigation into changing societal perceptions regarding women negotiating assertively.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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There's been a lot of research that shows that,

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when women negotiate,

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they suffer consequences sometimes in certain settings,

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when they're negotiating, for example, for a salary.

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Um, some research has shown

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that they can experience backlash, for asking,

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and that can lead to more negative perceptions,

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lower willingness to work with them.

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And, so we were curious,

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if there's some other strategies that might be helpful

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to women in these situations.

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Yes, absolutely. So, so, so again, so our interest was

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to see whether or not there is a strategy

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that could be helpful to women,

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when they do sometimes potentially face

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this backlash for asking.

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And while, idea of curiosity,

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being curious in a negotiation is not something new,

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you know, it can be very helpful to engage and ask questions

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and collect information during a negotiation.

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What's different here is the idea

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that curiosity might also affect the perceptions

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of the person that you're negotiating with.

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Um, and this matters

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because according to social role theory, the,

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you know, we're conditioned to expect people

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to behave in ways that are consistent with our norms.

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Um, and over time,

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or in the past at least, women were expected to,

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maybe they were more, more frequently associated with,

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taking care of others.

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And for example, as a result of that,

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women are then expected to be more communal, more kind.

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Uh, and so when they engage in behavior

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that seems very self-interested,

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and counter to those norms,

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there can be some backlash to that.

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Um, and so our hope was that, a strategy like

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social curiosity

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where you're really showing interest in the other person

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and their sort of needs, that, that might help

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to balance and counteract the effects of, the backlash

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that can come from engaging in a negotiation

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like a salary negotiation.

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Yeah, great question. So, curiosity,

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I would say is a mindset.

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It's is also been defined as an emotional motivational state

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where we are interested in understanding,

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specifically our focus on social curiosity in the workplace.

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And that's specifically an interest in understanding more

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about the behaviors and desires of the other party.

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Um, so in a negotiation that might look a little bit like

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question asking and maybe positive emotions,

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and that some work has been done in these areas before,

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but different from those, it also involves sort of a comfort

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with information

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that's not necessarily explicitly beneficial

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to the negotiator.

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So it's an interest in understanding, not simply

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for strategic purposes, sort of I'm okay with,

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gathering information about what you really want,

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or why, you know, what are your interests,

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even if they're not consistent with them helping me

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to pursue my objective.

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Yeah, absolutely. So, I conducted three studies.

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Um, so my, our predictions,

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and again, this was research that I did with H Ha Tsel

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and Lucy Pruitt.

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Um, and so we worked together on this week,

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designed a series of studies to test our predictions.

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Our first prediction was that, again,

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the social curiosity,

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and that's a very specific type

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of curiosity in the workplace

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that is directed towards the wellbeing, no, I'm sorry,

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not the wellbeing to understanding the other person.

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So social curiosity in the workplace.

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Um, one of the constructs

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or dimensions of that is, this idea of being open

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to understanding the

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interests and needs of the other person.

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So our prediction, we had two predictions.

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Our first prediction was to,

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if a person is engaging in a negotiation by asking

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with curiosity, rather than simply asking directly

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that this could lead to, more positive perceptions,

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which would have a more positive impact on the outcome,

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the negotiation outcome in terms of the social perceptions,

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are they seen as someone I prefer to work with?

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Do I have a more positive relationship with them?

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But also the negotiation outcome.

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So without having a negative effect on the outcome,

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the sort of the economic gains you might think

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of in a negotiation.

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So that was sort of our main hypothesis,

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and we designed two studies to test that.

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Um, and I'll come right back to how those were designed.

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But our second main hypothesis was then also

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to examine whether or not women might be more comfortable

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using this, approach compared to men,

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or just in general,

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because it gives them sort of an alternative way

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to engage in a negotiation.

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Um, sometimes women have been shown

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to be a little bit more anxious engaging in these

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types of negotiations.

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And again, I wanna be specific.

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The research has shown that women can be,

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better at advocating for themselves with regards to sort

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of making special work arrangements

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and other types of negotiation situations.

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It's just when it comes to this type of negotiations

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that are more, sort of more masculine, associated

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with more masculine traits like assertiveness

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and asking for more for oneself, those are the situations

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where women have been seen to do less well.

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So then as a result, sometimes women can have been observed

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to be more anxious, when engaging in such a negotiation

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because they anticipate backlash.

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And so we wanted to test also whether

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or not this alternative potential strategy could alleviate

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any potential concerns or anxiety, for women.

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And that matters because they might be more likely

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to engage, in a negotiation.

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And if they are more likely to engage,

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then they are maybe more likely to succeed.

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So our first hypothesis tested the effect

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of curiosity on the outcomes.

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And the second hypothesis, was to test the effect

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of the strategy on the negotiator's, own perceptions

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and willingness to engage in the negotiation.

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So we had three studies to test that.

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Um, and I'll go through the study.

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So the first two studies were trans, were,

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they were hypothetical, situations where,

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participants were imagining themselves in a negotiation,

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and they read through transcripts

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of a hypothetical negotiation,

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and then they were asked to reflect

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and react to those, negotiation transcripts.

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Uh, the third negotiate.

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The third study was a, more of a,

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a where we, in study three, we asked

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our participants to,

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try different negotiation strategies.

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And then we observed how they felt as a result of those.

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So going back to studies one

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and two, I'll start with study one.

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Um, in study one, we had,

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those participants were crowdsourcing, participants.

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We had 240 from prolific. These are working adults.

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Um, and we ask them to imagine themselves negotiating

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in this particular setting as a, coffee purchaser.

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Um, so it's a business to business, negotiation.

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And they were purchasing coffee from a vendor,

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a sales representative.

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So the transcript they read,

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put themselves into the buyer's role

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and read, the, the transcript from a seller.

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This was an actual transcript that we had,

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from a different negotiation where parties were either asked

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to behave in, behave with curiosity, engage

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and negotiate with curiosity

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or negotiate, simply directly.

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Uh, so those were the two contexts.

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And then the, the person that, was the representative

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that was being read in the transcript was either

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a male or a female.

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And so the participant read these transcripts

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and then reacted afterwards to the transcripts

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by answering questions that allowed us

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to capture information about, social outcomes

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and negotiation outcomes.

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We found that, first of all, we did not replicate

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what prior research had found in terms

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of the gender difference in our studies.

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Both studies, we did not necessarily find that women were

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experiencing a backlash effect.

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They were not treated more negatively,

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for engaging in the negotiation in the first place than men.

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However, we did find that, when negotiators engaged

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with curiosity, then that led

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to more positive social perceptions.

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People were more willing and interested to work with them.

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Um, people had more positive, perceptions

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of the relationship,

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when negotiators engaged with curiosity.

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And also, in this study one, we found that,

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they did not necessarily, they did receive a high,

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they were, sorry, let's see.

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In study one, in terms of outcomes, we also found that,

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the negotiator was able

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to achieve a better negotiation outcome, when in terms

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of the economic outcome, when they engage with curiosity.

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In study two, we found very similar results.

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So, we took a slightly different context

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because a lot of the past research has shown that,

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this, this backlash effect is more pronounced in situations

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where women are negotiating, to gain more

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for themselves in a self-interested way.

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So in this context, we shifted it so women were negotiating,

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the to target negotiator was negotiating

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for themselves in a performance review setting.

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They were asking for, a higher sort of salary increase

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after a positive performance review.

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And our conditions, either had sort of one

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of six different transcripts that target the supervisor

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who was conducting the performance review was

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either male or female.

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The participants in the research were all the,

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I, I'm sorry.

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They were all the supervisor. I, so let me say that again.

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So in the performance in this transcript,

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all the participants were a supervisor reading a transcript

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of a performance review

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that they had given their employee was doing well.

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The employee, is either male or female

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and is either engaging in the negotiation with curiosity,

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asking directly,

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or not asking at all for a salary increase.

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We wanted to compare even sort of the,

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to see if there's a real cost to asking, socially.

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Um, and really interestingly,

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what we found in this research is that when people engaged

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with curiosity, this did lead to,

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evaluations of the relationship that were as good

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as when people didn't ask at all for anything.

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Um, there was a social cost to asking directly,

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so they were evaluated more negatively.

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At the same time, when people engaged with curiosity,

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this had a positive sort

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of relationship effect on the relationship, similar to,

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when they didn't engage, in a negotiation.

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And, we also found that people were less likely

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to have a, sorry for that, all

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that beeping that's happening with it.

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Um, we also found that people were less likely to

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receive a salary increase if they did not ask.

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Of course, they were more likely

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to receive a salary increase if they asked directly

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or with curiosity.

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So the bottom line here in this second study is

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that when people asked whether with curiosity

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or directly, they were more likely

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to get a salary increase than if they didn't.

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But if they asked with curiosity,

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they didn't suffer social consequences for asking.

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Yeah. And the third study, we wanted to know if engaging

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with curiosity would be something

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that would be more comfortable for women,

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just if the approach would be

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something that's more appealing.

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And so we conducted a study where we asked women, we to,

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actually this was with university students,

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and we asked student, we told them again,

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a hypothetical situation where they're informed

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that they have received an internship offer for the summer.

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They're about to go meet with their supervisor,

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but they have no information about whether

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or not they will be paid for this, they, they and or,

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and if so, how much they will be paid.

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So they're encouraged to ask during that, negotiation.

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And we encourage them to ask either through curiosity

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and explain the potential benefits of using that approach,

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or we encourage them to ask quite directly and show

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and explain the benefits of that approach.

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And here we find that women are less anxious when encouraged

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to ask with curiosity rather than directly, which leads us

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to think they would be a bit more comfortable engaging

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and actually following through, with that intention,

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in a negotiation.

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So that was definitely, very promising.

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We also found that, there was no difference

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between men and women in terms of, whether

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or not they, they did both prefer using curiosity,

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as an approach in their negotiations.

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So that last, study definitely showed us that women

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and men,

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but were more comfortable using the approach

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of curiosity in their negotiations.

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And we think that that's particularly relevant

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because men seem to have more, strategies available

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to them for supporting, negotiations

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that don't necessarily lead to a backlash.

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Um, whereas women don't have as many strategies that,

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you know, prevent backlash.

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And this is one that really can do that.

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So even though our research doesn't replicate necessarily

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some of the prior work that shows a backlash,

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we still find that and believe that engaging

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with curiosity is something that may be beneficial

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to women in our research shows that it's beneficial

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to both men and women.

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Well, I think one of the important questions

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for future research is, is whether

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or not times are changing, in terms of just

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whether there is the backlash for women

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for engaging in a more assertive way.

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There's been a lot of research over the last two decades

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and, there's been a lot

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that people have learned in terms of consequences

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of behaving in certain ways.

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And, and it, and, we, we don't

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Know. That's an open

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question.

14:52.385 --> 14:54.405
Um, but certainly in this research,

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I haven't specifically replicated a backlash in the sense

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that women have a negative consequence

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for engaging in a negotiation,

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like a salary negotiation.

15:04.265 --> 15:07.285
But what other research has shown is sometimes we are a

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little less inclined to negotiate because we fear backlash.

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And that's where I think strategies like engaging

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with curiosity,

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just having a slightly different mindset when approaching

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this conversation, this complex conversation,

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I think could be more, again, potentially beneficial

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to women.

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Um, although our and our work has shown it's beneficial

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for all parties potentially.

00:00 - There's been a lot of research that shows that, when women negotiate, they suffer consequences sometimes in certain settings, when they're negotiating, for example, for a salary. some research has shown that they can experience backlash, for asking,

00:17 - and that can lead to more negative perceptions, lower willingness to work with them. And, so we were curious, if there's some other strategies that might be helpful to women in these situations. Yes, absolutely. So, so, so again, so our interest was to see whether or not there is a strategy that could be helpful to women, when they do sometimes potentially face this backlash for asking.

00:41 - And while, idea of curiosity, being curious in a negotiation is not something new, you know, it can be very helpful to engage and ask questions and collect information during a negotiation. What's different here is the idea that curiosity might also affect the perceptions of the person that you're negotiating with. and this matters because according to social role theory, the, you know, we're conditioned to expect people

01:09 - to behave in ways that are consistent with our norms. and over time, or in the past at least, women were expected to, maybe they were more, more frequently associated with, taking care of others. And for example, as a result of that, women are then expected to be more communal, more kind. and so when they engage in behavior that seems very self-interested, and counter to those norms,

01:42 - there can be some backlash to that. and so our hope was that, a strategy like social curiosity where you're really showing interest in the other person and their sort of needs, that, that might help to balance and counteract the effects of, the backlash that can come from engaging in a negotiation like a salary negotiation. Yeah, great question. So, curiosity, I would say is a mindset.

02:09 - It's is also been defined as an emotional motivational state where we are interested in understanding, specifically our focus on social curiosity in the workplace. And that's specifically an interest in understanding more about the behaviors and desires of the other party. so in a negotiation that might look a little bit like question asking and maybe positive emotions, and that some work has been done in these areas before, but different from those, it also involves sort of a comfort with information

02:42 - that's not necessarily explicitly beneficial to the negotiator. So it's an interest in understanding, not simply for strategic purposes, sort of I'm okay with, gathering information about what you really want, or why, you know, what are your interests, even if they're not consistent with them helping me to pursue my objective. Yeah, absolutely. So, I conducted three studies. so my, our predictions,

03:09 - and again, this was research that I did with H Ha Tsel and Lucy Pruitt. and so we worked together on this week, designed a series of studies to test our predictions. Our first prediction was that, again, the social curiosity, and that's a very specific type of curiosity in the workplace that is directed towards the wellbeing, no, I'm sorry, not the wellbeing to understanding the other person.

03:31 - So social curiosity in the workplace. one of the constructs or dimensions of that is, this idea of being open to understanding the interests and needs of the other person. So our prediction, we had two predictions. Our first prediction was to, if a person is engaging in a negotiation by asking with curiosity, rather than simply asking directly that this could lead to, more positive perceptions,

04:01 - which would have a more positive impact on the outcome, the negotiation outcome in terms of the social perceptions, are they seen as someone I prefer to work with? Do I have a more positive relationship with them? But also the negotiation outcome. So without having a negative effect on the outcome, the sort of the economic gains you might think of in a negotiation. So that was sort of our main hypothesis, and we designed two studies to test that.

04:29 - and I'll come right back to how those were designed. But our second main hypothesis was then also to examine whether or not women might be more comfortable using this, approach compared to men, or just in general, because it gives them sort of an alternative way to engage in a negotiation. sometimes women have been shown to be a little bit more anxious engaging in these types of negotiations.

04:56 - And again, I wanna be specific. The research has shown that women can be, better at advocating for themselves with regards to sort of making special work arrangements and other types of negotiation situations. It's just when it comes to this type of negotiations that are more, sort of more masculine, associated with more masculine traits like assertiveness and asking for more for oneself, those are the situations where women have been seen to do less well.

05:27 - So then as a result, sometimes women can have been observed to be more anxious, when engaging in such a negotiation because they anticipate backlash. And so we wanted to test also whether or not this alternative potential strategy could alleviate any potential concerns or anxiety, for women. And that matters because they might be more likely to engage, in a negotiation. And if they are more likely to engage, then they are maybe more likely to succeed.

05:55 - So our first hypothesis tested the effect of curiosity on the outcomes. And the second hypothesis, was to test the effect of the strategy on the negotiator's, own perceptions and willingness to engage in the negotiation. So we had three studies to test that. and I'll go through the study. So the first two studies were trans, were, they were hypothetical, situations where, participants were imagining themselves in a negotiation,

06:27 - and they read through transcripts of a hypothetical negotiation, and then they were asked to reflect and react to those, negotiation transcripts. the third negotiate. The third study was a, more of a, a where we, in study three, we asked our participants to, try different negotiation strategies. And then we observed how they felt as a result of those.

06:57 - So going back to studies one and two, I'll start with study one. in study one, we had, those participants were crowdsourcing, participants. We had 240 from prolific. These are working adults. and we ask them to imagine themselves negotiating in this particular setting as a, coffee purchaser. so it's a business to business, negotiation. And they were purchasing coffee from a vendor, a sales representative.

07:30 - So the transcript they read, put themselves into the buyer's role and read, the, the transcript from a seller. This was an actual transcript that we had, from a different negotiation where parties were either asked to behave in, behave with curiosity, engage and negotiate with curiosity or negotiate, simply directly. so those were the two contexts. And then the, the person that, was the representative

08:02 - that was being read in the transcript was either a male or a female. And so the participant read these transcripts and then reacted afterwards to the transcripts by answering questions that allowed us to capture information about, social outcomes and negotiation outcomes. We found that, first of all, we did not replicate what prior research had found in terms of the gender difference in our studies.

08:33 - Both studies, we did not necessarily find that women were experiencing a backlash effect. They were not treated more negatively, for engaging in the negotiation in the first place than men. However, we did find that, when negotiators engaged with curiosity, then that led to more positive social perceptions. People were more willing and interested to work with them. people had more positive, perceptions of the relationship,

09:05 - when negotiators engaged with curiosity. And also, in this study one, we found that, they did not necessarily, they did receive a high, they were, sorry, let's see. In study one, in terms of outcomes, we also found that, the negotiator was able to achieve a better negotiation outcome, when in terms of the economic outcome, when they engage with curiosity. In study two, we found very similar results. So, we took a slightly different context

09:39 - because a lot of the past research has shown that, this, this backlash effect is more pronounced in situations where women are negotiating, to gain more for themselves in a self-interested way. So in this context, we shifted it so women were negotiating, the to target negotiator was negotiating for themselves in a performance review setting. They were asking for, a higher sort of salary increase after a positive performance review. And our conditions, either had sort of one

10:14 - of six different transcripts that target the supervisor who was conducting the performance review was either male or female. The participants in the research were all the, I, I'm sorry. They were all the supervisor. I, so let me say that again. So in the performance in this transcript, all the participants were a supervisor reading a transcript of a performance review that they had given their employee was doing well.

10:40 - The employee, is either male or female and is either engaging in the negotiation with curiosity, asking directly, or not asking at all for a salary increase. We wanted to compare even sort of the, to see if there's a real cost to asking, socially. and really interestingly, what we found in this research is that when people engaged with curiosity, this did lead to, evaluations of the relationship that were as good

11:12 - as when people didn't ask at all for anything. there was a social cost to asking directly, so they were evaluated more negatively. At the same time, when people engaged with curiosity, this had a positive sort of relationship effect on the relationship, similar to, when they didn't engage, in a negotiation. And, we also found that people were less likely to have a, sorry for that, all that beeping that's happening with it.

11:44 - we also found that people were less likely to receive a salary increase if they did not ask. Of course, they were more likely to receive a salary increase if they asked directly or with curiosity. So the bottom line here in this second study is that when people asked whether with curiosity or directly, they were more likely to get a salary increase than if they didn't. But if they asked with curiosity,

12:10 - they didn't suffer social consequences for asking. Yeah. And the third study, we wanted to know if engaging with curiosity would be something that would be more comfortable for women, just if the approach would be something that's more appealing. And so we conducted a study where we asked women, we to, actually this was with university students, and we asked student, we told them again, a hypothetical situation where they're informed

12:37 - that they have received an internship offer for the summer. They're about to go meet with their supervisor, but they have no information about whether or not they will be paid for this, they, they and or, and if so, how much they will be paid. So they're encouraged to ask during that, negotiation. And we encourage them to ask either through curiosity and explain the potential benefits of using that approach, or we encourage them to ask quite directly and show and explain the benefits of that approach.

13:06 - And here we find that women are less anxious when encouraged to ask with curiosity rather than directly, which leads us to think they would be a bit more comfortable engaging and actually following through, with that intention, in a negotiation. So that was definitely, very promising. We also found that, there was no difference between men and women in terms of, whether or not they, they did both prefer using curiosity, as an approach in their negotiations.

13:36 - So that last, study definitely showed us that women and men, but were more comfortable using the approach of curiosity in their negotiations. And we think that that's particularly relevant because men seem to have more, strategies available to them for supporting, negotiations that don't necessarily lead to a backlash. whereas women don't have as many strategies that, you know, prevent backlash.

14:07 - And this is one that really can do that. So even though our research doesn't replicate necessarily some of the prior work that shows a backlash, we still find that and believe that engaging with curiosity is something that may be beneficial to women in our research shows that it's beneficial to both men and women. Well, I think one of the important questions for future research is, is whether or not times are changing, in terms of just

14:34 - whether there is the backlash for women for engaging in a more assertive way. There's been a lot of research over the last two decades and, there's been a lot that people have learned in terms of consequences of behaving in certain ways. And, and it, and, we, we don't Know. That's an open question. but certainly in this research,

14:54 - I haven't specifically replicated a backlash in the sense that women have a negative consequence for engaging in a negotiation, like a salary negotiation. But what other research has shown is sometimes we are a little less inclined to negotiate because we fear backlash. And that's where I think strategies like engaging with curiosity, just having a slightly different mindset when approaching this conversation, this complex conversation,

15:20 - I think could be more, again, potentially beneficial to women. although our and our work has shown it's beneficial for all parties potentially.

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