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January 17, 2025 – A new study published in Developmental Psychology has uncovered a significant gender gap in the way boys and girls negotiate, shedding light on how these differences may be tied to broader societal disparities seen in adulthood, such as wage inequality.
The study, led by Sophie Arnold, a doctoral student at New York University, and senior author Andrei Cimpian, a psychology professor at NYU, examined how boys and girls aged six to nine approached negotiations in a variety of contexts. The findings suggest that while both genders recognize the value of negotiation, boys are more likely to ask for higher rewards than girls—even when their performance is similar.
In a series of experiments involving over 200 child participants, the researchers presented boys and girls with cognitive tasks and asked them to negotiate for a bonus upon completing the task. Despite both genders performing similarly in these tasks, boys requested larger bonuses—animal pictures—as a reward. This difference was striking: the typical boy asked for more pictures than about 65% of the girls.
The researchers found that this gender gap was largely explained by differences in self-perception. Boys consistently rated their performance more highly than girls did, which led them to feel more entitled to ask for larger rewards. These inflated perceptions of ability appeared to empower boys to push boundaries in negotiations. Girls, in contrast, were less likely to leverage their perceptions of negotiation permissibility in asking for higher rewards.
“Our findings suggest that boys tend to overestimate their abilities compared to girls—and relative to their actual performance,” said Arnold. “This inflated self-perception may lead boys to feel more entitled to push the boundaries during negotiations.”
The study also revealed that while both boys and girls thought similarly about the permissibility and commonness of negotiation, these perceptions influenced their behavior differently. For boys, the belief that negotiating was common and acceptable was linked to higher bonus requests. Girls, however, did not show the same pattern; their perceptions of negotiation did not significantly affect their bonus requests.
Katherine McAuliffe, a professor at Boston College and a co-author of the study, noted that boys were more likely to act on their perceptions of negotiation, while girls did not.
“These findings offer new perspectives on the possible origins of negotiation disparities that exist between adult men and women in professional settings,” Cimpian concluded. “Understanding how these behaviors emerge early in life could help us address the roots of gender inequality in adulthood.”
This research emphasizes the importance of examining early developmental stages to better understand how gender disparities in negotiation and self-perception may contribute to ongoing social and economic inequalities.
The full study, titled “Unraveling the gender gap in negotiation: How children’s perceptions of negotiation and of themselves relate to their bargaining outcomes,” is available in the January 2025 issue of Developmental Psychology.
For more information, visit Developmental Psychology.
