TY - JOUR

T1 - Egalitarian Norm Messaging Increases Human Resources Professionals’ Salary Offers to Women

AU - Schuster, Carolin

AU - Sparkman, Gregg

AU - Walton, Gregory M.

AU - Alles, Anna

AU - Loschelder, David D.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 American Psychological Association

PY - 2023/4/1

Y1 - 2023/4/1

N2 - Across the globe, men make markedly more money than women, even within the same position. We introduce egalitarian norm messaging as a potential intervention to increase women’s salaries and counter the gender pay gap. In two preregistered experiments with seasoned professionals (N = 435, work experience: M > 8 years, salary negotiations: M > 18 per year), we find a significant gender pay bias—HR experts offered markedly lower salaries in an online negotiation to (simulated) female versus male candidates with identical qualifications. Moreover, the experiments show that dynamic (Experiments 1a and 2), as well as static egalitarian norm messages (Experiment 1a) increased salary offers to women. Exploratory mediation analyses suggest that the dynamic egalitarian norm effect was driven by HR professionals’ feeling of working towards a shared goal of greater equity. A message that merely increased awareness of the pay gap did not elicit this feeling and did not significantly increase salary offers to women but resulted in fairly equal treatment of men and women (Experiment 2). While the egalitarian norm intervention significantly increased salary offers to women, it also unexpectedly reduced offers to men, thereby reversing the gender bias (Experiment 2). We discuss the theoretical contribution with regard to gender pay bias and egalitarian norm interventions, as well as applied implications.

AB - Across the globe, men make markedly more money than women, even within the same position. We introduce egalitarian norm messaging as a potential intervention to increase women’s salaries and counter the gender pay gap. In two preregistered experiments with seasoned professionals (N = 435, work experience: M > 8 years, salary negotiations: M > 18 per year), we find a significant gender pay bias—HR experts offered markedly lower salaries in an online negotiation to (simulated) female versus male candidates with identical qualifications. Moreover, the experiments show that dynamic (Experiments 1a and 2), as well as static egalitarian norm messages (Experiment 1a) increased salary offers to women. Exploratory mediation analyses suggest that the dynamic egalitarian norm effect was driven by HR professionals’ feeling of working towards a shared goal of greater equity. A message that merely increased awareness of the pay gap did not elicit this feeling and did not significantly increase salary offers to women but resulted in fairly equal treatment of men and women (Experiment 2). While the egalitarian norm intervention significantly increased salary offers to women, it also unexpectedly reduced offers to men, thereby reversing the gender bias (Experiment 2). We discuss the theoretical contribution with regard to gender pay bias and egalitarian norm interventions, as well as applied implications.

KW - Dynamic norm

KW - Gender bias

KW - Gender pay gap

KW - Negotiation

KW - Norms

KW - Psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135957843&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/572540a9-9a65-3964-8f4c-5b958acaca70/

U2 - 10.1037/apl0001033

DO - 10.1037/apl0001033

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 36222632

VL - 108

SP - 541

EP - 552

JO - Journal of Applied Psychology

JF - Journal of Applied Psychology

SN - 0021-9010

IS - 4

ER -