Need a lawyer? Take a woman. Here is why

Women Act More Ethically Than Men When Representing Themselves — But Not When Representing Others

As "Snoopy" Miller said: "You know, in a situation like this, there's a high potentiality for the common motherfucker to bitch out." So having good representation is essential.

Research tells us a lot about why people behave unethically. For example, there is evidence that people tend to be more dishonest later in the day, because they’re more fatigued, and when they’re anxious, because they’re more likely to look out for themselves. Many of these studies, however, ... (it is copyrighted, blimey)

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The paper is here

“I won't let you down:” Personal ethical lapses arising from women’s advocating for others

Highlights

• Women's personal ethics are compromised when representing others instrategic interactions.
• Women’s ethical behavior in strategic interacyions is driven by anticipatory guilt due to social considerations.
• Women's ethhical behavior when advocating for others reflects the presumed ethical preferences of their constituents rather than their personal ethics.

Abstract

The current research examines whether women’s personal ethics are compromised when representing others in strategic interactions. Across five studies (n = 1337), we demonstrate that women’s ethical choices are more sensitive to whether they are representing themselves versus advocating for others compared to men’s ethical choices. We find that other-advocating women are more deceptive than self-advocating women, whereas men are just as likely to engage in morally questionable behaviors when representing themselves or others. We further show that women’s unethical behavior is driven by their anticipatory guilt as they seek to not let their constituents down in an advocacy role. Relative to men, women’s ethical behavior when advocating on behalf of others is especially likely to reflect the presumed ethical preferences of their constituents rather than solely a reflection of their own ethical preferences. Given women’s relatively high personal ethics, these results establish a risk to adopting an advocacy role for women: the social considerations inherent to advocacy put pressure on women to engage in deceptive behaviors that compromise their personal ethics.

Seems quite a crowded field of research.

Negotiating gender roles: Gender differences in assertive negotiating are mediated by women’s fear of backlash and attenuated when negotiating on behalf of others.

Abstract

The authors propose that gender differences in negotiations reflect women’s contextually contingent impression management strategies. They argue that the same behavior, bargaining assertively, is construed as congruent with female gender roles in some contexts yet incongruent in other contexts. Further, women take this contextual variation into account, adjusting their bargaining behavior to manage social impressions. A particularly important contextual variable is advocacy—whether bargaining on one’s own behalf versus on another’s behalf. In self-advocacy contexts, women anticipate that assertiveness will evoke incongruity evaluations, negative attributions, and subsequent “backlash”; hence, women hedge their assertiveness, using fewer competing tactics and obtaining lower outcomes. However, in other-advocacy contexts, women achieve better outcomes as they do not expect incongruity evaluations or engage in hedging. In a controlled laboratory experiment, the authors found that gender interacts with advocacy context in this way to determine negotiation style and outcomes. Additionally, process measures of anticipated attributions and backlash statistically mediated this interaction effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Anxious, threatened, and also unethical: How anxiety makes individuals feel threatened and commit unethical acts.

Abstract

People often experience anxiety in the workplace. Across 6 studies, we show that anxiety, both induced and measured, can lead to self-interested unethical behavior. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that compared with individuals in a neutral state, anxious individuals are more willing (a) to participate in unethical actions in hypothetical scenarios and (b) to engage in more cheating to make money in situations that require truthful self-reports. In Studies 3 and 4, we explore the psychological mechanism underlying unethical behaviors when experiencing anxiety. We suggest and find that anxiety increases threat perception, which, in turn, results in self-interested unethical behaviors. Study 5 shows that, relative to participants in the neutral condition, anxious individuals find their own unethical actions to be less problematic than similar actions of others. In Study 6, data from subordinate–supervisor dyads demonstrate that experienced anxiety at work is positively related with experienced threat and unethical behavior. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

And one advice at last, avoid people in the afternoon. Unless something wicked this way comes.

In the Afternoon, the Moral Slope Gets Slipperier