When and Why Do Men Negotiate Assertively? It Depends on Specific Threats to Their Masculinity and the Negotiation Topic

We elucidate when and why men negotiate assertively. Threatening masculinity should increase men’s willingness to negotiate assertively in salary negotiations, which are viewed as masculine, but not in negotiations about flexible working hours, which are viewed as feminine. In two experiments including men from Germany and the United States (U.S.; total N = 1,010), men were either threatened in terms of their masculinity or not. In Study 1, following the threat manipulation, men negotiated either salary or flexible working hours. The results from Study 1 revealed that threatened men (relative to nonthreatened men) reported more ambitious goals, intended to make more ambitious offers, and actually made more ambitious offers, but only when negotiating salary. In Study 2, men always negotiated salary, yet received different kinds of feedback involving threats to their masculinity. The results from Study 2 revealed that threatening feedback based on both men’s prescriptions and men’s proscriptions (e.g., a lack of assertiveness and pronounced weakness), in particular, led men negotiating salary to report more ambitious goals, intend to make more ambitious offers, and actually to make more ambitious offers. Altogether, our research revealed that men show heightened assertiveness when under a specific threat and negotiating a male-typed topic. An important question for future research is to what extent our findings generalize across different intersecting identities, demographics, and cultures.