Punishing female negotiators for asserting too much…or not enough: Exploring why advocacy moderates backlash against assertive female negotiators

We complement prior findings that self-advocating female negotiators are reluctant to assert their interests and subsequently suffer financial repercussions, relative to other-advocating females, self-advocating males, and other-advocating males, by showing that self-advocating female negotiators who do assert their interests suffer negative social judgments (i.e., backlash). We use nascent theory on societal norms for the behavior of each gender to explain why advocacy context moderates backlash. We show that assertive, self-advocating women suffer a social backlash (for example, decreased likability) because their behavior is associated with high negative masculine and low positive feminine characterizations. Non-assertive, other-advocating women suffer a leadership backlash (for example, lower presumed competency) because their behavior is associated with high negative feminine and low positive masculine characterizations. Interestingly, male negotiators do not suffer any backlash consequences despite being characterized in a fashion similar to that of the females in each condition.

► Assertive female self-advocates incur social backlash. ► Female other-advocates avoid social backlash despite assertive behavior. ► Non-assertive female other-advocates incur leadership backlash. ► Violating expectations leads to attributions of negative gender characteristics. ► The backlash effect is mediated by attributions of negative gender characteristics.