Negotiating Femininity: Gender-Relevant Primes Improve Women’s Economic Performance in Gender Role Incongruent Negotiations

According to gender role congruity theory, women, compared to men, underperform in masculine negotiations because these negotiations are incongruent with women’s gender role. Based on this framework, we developed two gender-relevant primes—a masculine-supplement prime and a feminine-complement prime—that address role incongruity and should improve women’s economic performance by either supplementing masculinity or complementing femininity. In Study 1, physicians (N = 78; 50% women) in an executive education program engaged in a masculine-supplement prime, which involved recalling agentic behavior; in Study 2, undergraduate students (N = 112; 50% women) completed a feminine-complement prime, which involved imagining negotiating for a friend. In Study 3, a community sample (N = 996; 46% women) completed an online experiment with the primes. Results from the three studies showed that these primes improved women’s economic performance and eliminated the gender gap in negotiation. Perception of fit partially explained the efficacy of the masculine-supplement prime for women, though not the feminine-complement prime. We build on past research concerning situational moderators by investigating gender role congruity from an intrapsychic perspective. We also make a practical contribution; these primes can be used by women to improve economic performance in gender role incongruent negotiations. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index.