Negotiation Research

Women are underrepresented in leadership roles in the workplace, holding only about 16% of executive positions in Fortune 500 companies. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and others have urged women to “lean in” by competing for high-level managerial jobs and negotiating for better pay and greater responsibility. Yet substantial evidence shows that many women who try to lean in face biased hiring and promotion processes that favor men.

In negotiation, the party who makes the first offer often gets the lion’s share of the value. That can be due to the anchoring effect, or the tendency for the first offer to “anchor” the bargaining that follows in its direction, even if the offer recipient thinks the offer is out of line. Yet plenty of times, the person making the first offer fails to capture most of the value in a negotiation. Why might that be the case?

When negotiators know they’re more powerful, they tend to believe that a fair agreement should reflect their power advantage, while weaker negotiators tend to favor equal outcomes.

Imagine that you are about to ask someone for something. Maybe you’re trying to initiate a negotiation by asking a potential customer to listen to your proposal. Or you could be making a one-off request, such as asking a neighbor to quiet his barking dog. How likely do you think it is that the other party will comply with your request?