Recently, I stumbled upon an article about women, fear and decision making. According to a recent study published in PLOS, these three concepts are related:
… fear may affect women’s decisions in choosing immediate rewards versus larger delayed ones, while men’s decisions appear unaffected by emotion, …. (Science Daily at 1.)
In the study published in PLOS (PLOS), Eleonora Fiorenzato, Patrizia Bisiacchi, and Giorgia Cona from the University of Padua, Italy sought to determine how emotions such as fear and joy along with gender affect our ability to make decisions. (Science Daily at 1.) To do this they shared an anonymous online survey through various platforms including social media for a nine-week period which resulted in 308 participants (63% women and 37% men.) (PLOS at 4; Science Daily at 2.) The participants were shown a brief movie clip. To induce fear, the participants were shown a scary movie such as The Sixth Sense or Silence of the Lambs. To induce joy, participants were shown a positive documentary showing forests, waterfalls et cetera. Finally, the neutral affect group was shown a documentary clip on urban environments. (Science Daily at 2.)
The subjects were then asked a hypothetical question: Would each of them rather have €20,000( Euros) today or €40,000 (Euros) three years from now?
The researchers found:
The present study provides compelling evidence that gender has a crucial role in the interplay between emotions and intertemporal decision-making, with gender and emotions having an interacting effect that can differently shape DD [delay discounting]. Our key finding was that, when experiencing unpleasant emotions, particularly fear, women exhibited a steeper discounting of future rewards compared to men. Women were also more likely to prefer immediate rewards when they were in a negative emotional state rather than in a positive one, whereas men showed an opposite intertemporal tendency compared to women, preferring delayed rewards when they were in a fearful state. Furthermore, while women’s discounting rate varies based on the emotional state, men’s choices on monetary rewards were not significantly affected by the emotional state.
As such, our study provides the first evidence that fear can trigger different implicit goals and intertemporal choices as a function of the gender. (PLOS at 8.)
The study did find that there was no significant difference between the genders when making decisions in a joyful or neutral mood. (Science Daily at 2.)
In short, the study shows that when women are fearful, they are more likely to take less today than to delay that decision enabling to obtain more later on. (Id.)
To me, this finding has huge implications in negotiations especially where there is an imbalance of power. If the woman has the less power, then she may well be operating out of fear. Based on this study, she is liable to take a lot less today (i.e., delay discounting) than to delay that choice so as to obtain more later on. As a result, she will walk out of the negotiation, leaving a lot on the table.
The cautionary tale for women: do not let our fear override our business sense (and sense of fairness)!
… Just something to think about.
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