Expressive Writing as an Intervention for Anxiety’s Negative Effects on Women Negotiators

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study the effects of anxiety resulting from negative stereotypes on women’s negotiation performance (Kray, Galinsky, & Thompson, 2001); furthermore, I test whether or not expressive writing may act as an intervention and moderate the relationship. I hypothesize that dispositionally anxious negotiators will perform worse in a stereotype-threatened environment relative to those with low anxiety. Secondly, I hypothesize that among high-anxious negotiators, those who complete an expressive writing task will report lower levels of anxiety and will be less anxious compared to their dispositionally anxious peers in the control condition. This decrease in anxiety is expected to lead to better negotiation outcomes. To test these hypotheses, I am engaging 100 mixed-sex dyads in a negotiation task and assessing a number of objective and subjective negotiation outcomes. Before the task, I am subtly reminding all participants in the dyads, whose female participants I have pre-screened for either high or low habitual negotiation anxiety, about the negative stereotypes that exist for women in negotiation. At random, half of the dyads will complete an expressive writing task just before negotiating while the other half will complete a control task. I will assess differences of anxiety and negotiation outcome measures between the groups. Implications for theory, research, and practice will be discussed.