The need for a female perspective in designing agent-based negotiation support

Abstract

This study investigates whether an agent-based Negotiation Training System (NTS) can teach women Strategic Empathy - a recently introduced negotiation strategy based on perspective taking - and whether this can improve their negotiation performance. Developed and tested through an interaction-based real-time experiment was a NTS that integrated instructions on how to utilize Strategic Empathy. Women in the experimental group showed significantly higher levels of perspective-taking compared to the control group, and their understanding and use of Strategic Empathy increased over time. Also, a significant positive effect was found of Strategic Empathy on women's self-efficacy. No significant positive effect was found of Strategic Empathy on persistence. The high cognitive load of the experiment and a lack of intrinsic motivation may have caused this finding. Overall, this work demonstrates the applicability of using NTS to teach Strategic Empathy, and its effectiveness for enhancing women's self-efficacy in salary negotiations.