Cambridge, MA, July 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Negotiation is often seen as a pathway to advancement at work. Employees are encouraged to negotiate for higher pay, better benefits, promotions, and more meaningful responsibilities. But new research from the MIT Sloan School of Management suggests that negotiation may not work equally for everyone.
“The Social-Class Gap in Negotiation: Lower-Class Individuals Negotiate Less and Face More Backlash,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was co-authored by MIT Sloan School of Management professor Jackson G. Lu, along with Ying Lin of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Michele J. Gelfand of Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Across five studies involving more than 11,000 participants, the researchers found that lower-social-class individuals are less likely than their higher-class counterparts to initiate negotiations. This pattern appeared across multiple settings, including a nationally representative sample of employees, MBA graduates entering the labor market, an online labor market experiment, and a survey of full-time U.S. workers.
But the research also revealed a troubling double bind: Lower-social-class individuals may have good reason to hesitate. In an experiment with more than 1,100 U.S. human resources professionals, the same negotiation request generated stronger social backlash when it came from a lower-class candidate than from a higher-class candidate.
“Negotiation is often framed as a simple matter of confidence — if you want more, just ask. Our research shows that this advice may be misleading: Lower-class individuals are less likely to negotiate, and when they do negotiate, they can be penalized more harshly for the same behavior,” Lu said.
The researchers argue that negotiation can become an overlooked mechanism through which workplace inequality persists. In modern organizations, negotiation affects a wide range of career outcomes, from starting salary and benefits to promotions, raises, and job content. Even small differences in who negotiates can compound over time.
In one study from their research, the authors found MBA students from lower-class origins were less likely to negotiate their starting salaries. Those who did not negotiate earned, on average, $6,450 less in annual salary than those who did. The researchers estimate that, assuming a 5% annual raise, this initial gap could compound to approximately $779,000 over a 40-year career.
Another of the authors’ studies found that higher-social-class individuals were more likely to negotiate across multiple workplace outcomes, including starting salary, benefits, promotions, salary raises, and job content. The class gap in negotiation was partly explained by two psychological mechanisms: lower-social-class individuals reported a diminished sense of power and greater concern that asking for more would damage relationships or make them appear uncooperative.
“Lower-class individuals are not simply failing to advocate for themselves; they are navigating a social environment in which self-advocacy may carry greater interpersonal risk. That is what makes this a double bind,” said Lu.
To test whether those concerns were grounded in reality, the researchers conducted an experiment with human resource professionals. Participants evaluated a fictitious job candidate whose résumé and interview transcript signaled either a higher- or lower-class background. The candidate either negotiated compensation or did not. When the candidate negotiated, HR professionals viewed him as less cooperative. This cooperativeness penalty was significantly stronger for the lower-class candidate and translated into lower hiring evaluations.
These findings suggest that encouraging lower-class employees simply to “negotiate more” may be insufficient and could even backfire if organizations fail to address bias in how negotiation behavior is evaluated.
The researchers point to several possible organizational responses. Companies can provide negotiation training and empowerment programs to help reduce confidence and information gaps. But they should also reduce ambiguity around negotiation by clarifying pay ranges, making promotion criteria more transparent, and ensuring that managers evaluate negotiation requests consistently across employees from different backgrounds.
“Negotiation can be a vehicle for upward mobility, but only if the rules of the game are visible and applied fairly. To reduce class inequality, organizations need to address both sides of the problem: who feels able to ask and how others judge them when they do,” Lu said.
- Lower-class individuals are less likely to negotiate