Seeds of the gender pay gap may have been planted in childhood, according to a New York University study.
NYU doctoral student Sophie Arnold said previous studies had shown a persistent gender pay gap caused by a number of issues occurring in adulthood, but few had looked at childhood behaviour.
Ms Arnold, lead author of a paper published in the journal Developmental Psychology, said the new study found that despite holding similar views on the purpose and value of negotiation, boys asked for bigger bonuses than girls for completing the same work.
She said the findings indicated that these outcomes were linked, in part, to differences in perceptions of abilities.
“In a series of cognitive tasks, boys had a higher opinion of their abilities and therefore asked for higher bonuses, even though they performed no better than girls did in these tasks.
“Our findings suggest that boys tend to overestimate their abilities compared to girls and relative to their actual performance.
“This inflated self-perception may lead boys to feel more entitled to push the boundaries during negotiations.”
The paper’s senior author Professor Andrei Cimpian said the research offered new perspectives on the possible origins of negotiation disparities that existed between adult men and women in professional settings.
Read the full study: Unraveling the gender gap in negotiation: How children’s perceptions of negotiation and of themselves relate to their bargaining outcomes.