Despite an abundance of evidence, the gender pay gap—the fact that women are consistently paid less than men—continues to provoke debate and remains a contentious social issue. Some people believe the pay gap is a non-issue, while others contend that it is an unmistakable modern societal dilemma. What accounts for these different viewpoints?
My colleagues Anna Dorfman, Ramona Bobocel, and I suspected that men would be more skeptical of the pay gap than women. This idea was based on a pattern that shows up repeatedly in psychological research: people interpret information in ways that align with their existing beliefs and desires. That is, being skeptical of the pay gap suits men's interests more than it suits women's, so we expected to see gender-based polarization on the issue.
We also proposed a potential solution: "wise reasoning." Practicing wise reasoning means adopting intellectual humility and considering alternative information and perspectives, even if doing so may reveal things that do not necessarily suit one's immediate preferences.
We expected that men who used wise reasoning when considering the pay gap dilemma would be more capable of change and acknowledging the gap. This aligned with our previous studies, which have shown that wise reasoning can reduce polarization and produce more cooperative mindsets on other issues. But would wise reasoning help men acknowledge the gender pay gap?
Putting Wise Reasoning to the Test
We tested our ideas about gender-based polarization in pay gap skepticism and what could be done about it. We invited over 600 North American adults to review a condensed news excerpt presenting facts about gender pay disparities in companies. After reading the excerpt, we asked the participants to articulate their thoughts about the article through open-text responses and rate their beliefs about pay disparities (this was our measure of pay gap skepticism).
Finally, all participants reported how much they used various reasoning processes when thinking about the news article and writing their personal thoughts. We know from past research that people tend to report their reasoning accurately because what they say about their reasoning matches more objective ways of assessing how they think about something.
As we suspected, men were significantly more skeptical about the gender pay gap than women in both studies. In fact, people's pay gap skepticism was apparent in the thoughts they wrote down before we ever asked them directly about their beliefs.
Most notably, however, the more men engaged in wise reasoning, the less skeptical they were about the gender pay gap. Apparently, wise reasoning helps people accept hard truths, even if the facts contradict their preferred worldview. As a result, wise reasoning corresponded to less pay gap skepticism in men and more consensus between men and women on the status and importance of the gender pay gap.
Implications for Business, Society, and Individuals
Diverging beliefs and desires create hurdles to enacting decisions that could resolve the gender pay gap. Our studies focused on these underlying beliefs and found that wise reasoning related to consensus between men and women on beliefs about the pay gap. We suspect that wise reasoning could be an important factor in helping men and women collaborate on mutually beneficial solutions rather than simply prioritizing their own group's interests.
But how can we improve our—and others'—wise reasoning? Critically, people can choose to apply wise reasoning when thinking about a particular issue. And people can get better at using wise reasoning with practice. For example, to boost wise reasoning, you could ask yourself how you came to have specific opinions on an issue and consider how different contexts or experiences may have led others to hold different opinions; you can reflect on the possibility that there may be some truth in both views, and how they could potentially be integrated to resolve an issue cooperatively. Importantly, our previous studies suggested that wise reasoning can be "nudged" and therefore can be boosted and even trained when embarking on discussions about important issues like pay gaps in workplaces.
These and our previous studies suggest that wise reasoning offers a potential route to consensus when people's vested interests are in conflict. Given that workplaces and society at large rely on social cooperation and collaboration, widespread adoption of wise reasoning could serve as a catalyst for business and societal advancement and prosperity beyond the issue of pay disparities.
For Further Reading
Brienza, J. P., Dorfman, A., & Bobocel, D. R. (in press). Mind the gap: Wise reasoning attenuates gender pay gap scepticism in men. European Journal of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.3009
Brienza, J. P., Kung, F. K., & Chao, M. M. (2021). Wise reasoning, intergroup positivity, and attitude polarization across contexts. Nature Communications, 12, 3313. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23432-1
Grossmann, I., Brienza, J. P., & Bobocel, D. R. (2017). Wise deliberation sustains cooperation, Nature Human Behaviour, 1(0061). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0061
Justin P. Brienza is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland Business School in Brisbane, Australia. His research and teaching focuses on building wisdom, avoiding bias, and encouraging balance at work and in leadership.
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