September 20, 2014

Does your face help or hurt when you negotiate?

MarketWatch reporter Catey Hill gives a popularized summary of recent research showing that facial characteristics affect negotiator styles and negotiation outcomes.

People with feminine faces, whether men or women, are perceived as more cooperative than those with masculine faces. Basically the feminine features encourage other negotiators to compete more aggressively. The more masculine-faced negotiators expect the feminine-faced counterparts to concede more when confrontation tactics are used.

Obviously, this can lead to less desirable outcomes for the "girlie-faced" negotiators. (A Google search shows that many people are preoccupied with the topic.).

Feminine faces are "characterized by less prominent eyebrow ridges; shorter faces; less laterally prominent cheekbones, jawbones, and chins; smaller noses and fuller lips" for purposes of the study. (See more about this at BloombergBusiness, the source of the image here.)

The point of the study is that different types of stereotypes are cued, depending on the person's facial characteristics.

Ms. Hill quotes the study authors about the practical implications:
 “It may behoove negotiators to be aware of the impact of their visual presentation on their counterparts, and to make decisions on how to negotiate — face-to face or over the phone or via text or email — depending on how they are likely to be treated,” the study authors conclude.
That said, my experience would suggest that feminine-faced negotiators have many more options than are suggested above. (For additional info, see Eric Gladstone Video). Remember what we have learned from decades of research on nonverbal behavior:
  1. Dominance cues from hand gestures, tone of voice, foot gestures etc. can easily cancel the impact of messages from the face. These other gestures are relatively easily learned through training and practice.
  2. People who rely primarily on facial expression to understand others are relatively easy to fool. Hence those who take their cues from "girlie faces" to become more aggressive expose themselves a large set of counter-measures from a "girlie-faced" person who has expertise in nonverbal behavior.
  3. The best negotiators train themselves to consider cues from the entire body, not just facial appearance and expressions.
As always, effective negotiations are a product of options. The more options you give yourself, the more effective you will be as a negotiator.

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