People tend to listen to big talkers, whether they are women or men. Still, more women prefer not to use assertive language, according to a new study. Participants in an experiment more often followed advice of people using assertive ‘cheap talk,’ statements that cannot be verified as true.

The study, published in Management Science on Feb. 17, found that participants in an experiment more often followed advice when the people giving the advice used assertive «cheap talk,» statements that cannot be verified as true. Examples of such statements are often found in job seeking cover letters, such as «I have extremely strong problem-solving skills.»

The experiment participants followed the advice people gave at similar rates regardless of their gender — even though they thought other people would be less likely to follow the advice of the female leaders.

«It was surprising. We didn’t see actual discrimination: the subjects themselves seemed to respond about the same to men and women,» said Manian. «Yet, after the experiment was over, and we asked the participants what they thought we’d find, many of them expected discrimination.»

For the experiment, Manian and Ketki Sheth, an economist at University of California, Merced, recruited about 1,000 people to play a difficult online game. The players were paired with either a male or female leader, who gave advice online on how to play the game to earn the biggest reward.

Everyone had the same interactions with their leaders, except for two features — the gender of the leader and the assertiveness of the leaders’ language. The same advice was couched in language that ranged from less assertive, using statements such as «You probably have better problem-solving skills than I do, but here is what I am thinking,» to more assertive, such as «If you listen to my advice, I can assure you that my skills and experiences will help you perform well in this game.»

The game was played by about 1,000 people, roughly half were U.C. Merced students and half recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk online crowdsourcing portal.

Story Source:
Materials provided by Washington State University. Original written by Sara Zaske. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.