Women negotiate as effectively as men – but leave people happier 

ITHACA, N.Y. – Men and women achieve similar economic outcomes in negotiations, but female negotiators foster stronger interpersonal relationships, which lead in turn to greater satisfaction with the result and a greater desire to negotiate with that woman again in the future, according to new research co-authored by Cornell University.

“So much of negotiation research has really focused on men’s advantages,” said Charlotte “Charlie” Townsend, a post-doctoral associate at Cornell. “But if women are creating better relationship outcomes in negotiations, it makes a lot of sense that their partners would like to negotiate with them more than with men.”  

Townsend is the author of “People Prefer to Negotiate with Women, Even When Outcomes Are Identical and Gender is Unknown,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper is co-authored by Laura J. Kray and Solene Delecourt, of the University of California, Berkeley. 

Contrary to previously held beliefs, women also achieved economic outcomes on par with men, suggesting that greater likability does not come at a performance cost, and further, it may provide women with more opportunities to negotiate, which compound into economic gains.  

“Early research from the 1970s and 1980s focused on gender as a stable predictor of negotiation outcomes, suggesting that women performed worse in negotiating, but that has changed over time,” Townsend said. “Our data shows that women are achieving equivalent economic outcomes, and better relational outcomes, compared to men.” 

In their first study, the researchers used an archival dataset of over 2,000 observations from a full-time MBA negotiation course. In this course, students completed face-to-face negotiation role-playing exercises and then evaluated their partners on subjective value. The results showed that people rated women higher in building trust, fairness, satisfying their partner’s needs, expanding the pie (i.e., creating opportunity), communicating and listening.  

The second study examined partner-based gender effects in anonymous online negotiations. Partners took part in an online negotiation, in which they were randomly paired and could communicate via chat to reach a deal. The results showed that even when negotiators’ gender remained unidentified, women partners were more liked, which predicted greater satisfaction, independent of economic outcomes.  

In the final study, the researchers used an AI model to code a handful of different behaviors in a negotiation transcript and found that women were more likely to accept an offer, which led to more positive feelings from their partners. However, they also found that women were not accepting deals earlier in the process or making worse deals than their male counterparts.  

“We don’t talk enough about the social consequences in negotiations, and the importance of how your partner makes you feel,” Townsend said. “We tried to show there are important downstream consequences. It’s really about building relationships with people. 

“When it comes to negotiations, people often think about getting the best deal in economic terms, but relationships have important consequences, and I think this work demonstrates that women have a real strength that we should be considering more, and that we can all learn from.” 

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews.

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