The authors argue that high self-monitors may be more sensitive to the status implications of social exchange and more effective in managing their exchange relations to elicit conferrals of status than low self-monitors. In a series of studies, they found that high self-monitors were more accurate in perceiving the status dynamics involved both in a set of fictitious exchange relations and in real relationships involving other members of their social group. Further, high self-monitors elevated their social status among their peers by establishing a reputation as a generous exchange partner. Specifically, they were more likely than low self-monitors to be sought out for help and to refrain from asking others for help. This behavior provides one explanation for why high self-monitors acquire elevated status among their peers--they are more attuned to status dynamics in exchange relations and adapt their behavior in ways that elicit status.

The authors propose that gender differences in negotiations reflect women's contextually contingent impression management strategies. They argue that the same behavior, bargaining assertively, is construed as congruent with female gender roles in some contexts yet incongruent in other contexts. Further, women take this contextual variation into account, adjusting their bargaining behavior to manage social impressions. A particularly important contextual variable is advocacy-whether bargaining on one's own behalf versus on another's behalf. In self-advocacy contexts, women anticipate that assertiveness will evoke incongruity evaluations, negative attributions, and subsequent "backlash"; hence, women hedge their assertiveness, using fewer competing tactics and obtaining lower outcomes. However, in other-advocacy contexts, women achieve better outcomes as they do not expect incongruity evaluations or engage in hedging. In a controlled laboratory experiment, the authors found that gender interacts with advocacy context in this way to determine negotiation style and outcomes. Additionally, process measures of anticipated attributions and backlash statistically mediated this interaction effect.

No abstract

A series of studies found that the personality dimension of unmitigated communion (H. L. Fritz & V. S. Helgeson, 1998) leads negotiators to make concessions to avoid straining relationships. Results indicate that even within the population of successful business executives, this dimension of relational anxiety can be identified distinctly from more general relational orientations, such as agreeableness, and that it distinctly predicts accommodating tendencies in everyday conflicts. In economic games, unmitigated communion predicts giving in contexts in which the relational norm of reciprocity applies, but not in contexts tapping instrumental or altruistic motives for cooperation. In distributive negotiations, the effect of unmitigated communion in lowering a negotiator's outcome is mediated by prenegotiation anxieties about relational strain and plans to make large concessions if needed to avoid impasse (lower reservation points). In integrative negotiations, high unmitigated communion on both sides of the negotiation dyad results in relational accommodation, evidenced by decreased success in maximizing economic joint gain but increased subjective satisfaction with the relationship.

Research evidence across a number of disciplines and fields has shown that women can encounter both social and financial backlash when they behave assertively, for example, by asking for resources at the bargaining table. But this backlash appears to be most evident when a gender stereotype that prescribes communal, nurturing behavior by women is activated. In situations in which this female stereotype is suppressed, backlash against assertive female behavior is attenuated. We review several contexts in which stereotypic expectations of females are more dormant or where assertive behavior by females can be seen as normative. We conclude with prescriptions from this research that suggest how women might attenuate backlash at the bargaining table and with ideas about how to teach these issues of gender and backlash to student populations in order to make students, both male and female, more aware of their own inclination to backlash and how to rectify such inequities from both sides of the bargaining table.