Not competent enough to know the difference? Gender stereotypes about women’s ease of being misled predict negotiator deception

• We examined gender stereotypes about the perceived ease of being misled.
• Women are perceived to be easier to mislead in negotiations than men.
• The perceived ease of being misled corresponds with perceived low competence.
• Women are deceived more than men in distributive negotiations.

We examined whether gender differences in the perceived ease of being misled predict the likelihood of being deceived in distributive negotiations. Study 1 (N = 131) confirmed that female negotiators are perceived as more easily misled than male negotiators. This perception corresponded with perceptions of women’s relatively low competence. Study 2 (N = 328) manipulated negotiator gender, competence and warmth and found that being perceived as easily misled via low competence affected expectations about the negotiating process, including less deception scrutiny among easily misled negotiators and lower ethical standards among their negotiating counterparts. This pattern held true regardless of buyer and seller gender. Study 3 (N = 298) examined whether patterns of deception in face-to-face negotiations were consistent with this gender stereotype. As expected, negotiators deceived women more so than men, thus leading women into more deals under false pretenses than men.