An experiment found that people negotiating a salary for themselves settled for significantly less money than when negotiating those same terms on behalf of a friend, largely out of fear of being seen as too pushy, while a separate trial found just two 90-minute assertiveness training sessions produced measurable gains in nurses that were still holding six months later

Plenty of people who find it nearly impossible to advocate for themselves have no trouble at all standing up for someone else. Two studies looking closely at where assertiveness actually comes from suggest that gap is real and measurable, and that becoming more assertive is less about developing a bolder personality than about specific, learnable factors.

The clearest evidence comes from a 2010 study by Emily Amanatullah and Michael Morris, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In a simulated salary negotiation, participants negotiated either for themselves or on behalf of a friend, against an identical low opening offer. Women negotiating for themselves anticipated backlash if they asked for anything above $43,250, a notably lower threshold than men negotiating for themselves, at $50,813, or either gender negotiating on someone else’s behalf, both above $47,000. When it came to actual counteroffers, self-advocating women countered with a mean of just $42,000, roughly $7,000 lower than self-advocating men and about $7,000 lower than either gender negotiating for a friend. That gap disappeared entirely when women negotiated on behalf of someone else, where they matched men’s outcomes. The fear of being seen as too pushy, specifically tied to advocating for oneself, cost self-advocating women nearly 20 percent of their total expected value in the negotiation.

A second study helps show that assertiveness, once identified as a specific skill rather than a personality trait, responds to surprisingly brief, targeted training. In a 2018 study by Naoki Yoshinaga and colleagues, published in the Journal of Nursing Management, 33 nurses completed just two 90-minute training sessions, one month apart, using cognitive techniques that specifically targeted fear of negative evaluation alongside behavioral assertiveness skills. Scores on a standard measure of assertiveness improved significantly from the start of training to the end, and crucially, those gains held up at a six-month follow-up, they weren’t a short-lived boost that faded once the training ended. The effect size in this study was notably larger than what earlier, similarly brief assertiveness trainings had produced, suggesting the specific addition of directly challenging the fear of being judged negatively was what made the difference this time.

Together, these two studies point to assertiveness as something shaped by identifiable, addressable factors rather than an innate trait some people simply have and others don’t. Amanatullah and Morris’s research shows that the fear driving unassertive behavior is specific, it’s tied to advocating for oneself in particular, not to negotiation or confrontation in general. Yoshinaga and colleagues’ research shows that directly targeting that same underlying fear, the worry about being judged for asking, produced durable gains in assertiveness in a remarkably short amount of training time. Between the two, the barrier to assertiveness looks less like a stable personality trait and more like a specific, nameable fear that responds to specific, learnable techniques.

It’s worth being honest about what these two studies don’t establish. Amanatullah and Morris’s research involved a relatively small sample of 59 participants in a simulated negotiation, and while the pattern was clear and statistically significant, real-world negotiations carry additional complexity a lab study can’t fully capture. Yoshinaga and colleagues’ study involved just 33 nurses in a single workplace setting with no control group for comparison, so while the pre-post and six-month gains were real, a larger controlled trial would strengthen confidence in exactly how much of the effect came from the training itself.

Within those honest limits, the research offers a genuinely useful reframe for anyone who finds it easier to stand up for others than for themselves. The instinct to advocate assertively is already there, evidenced by how readily it shows up on someone else’s behalf. What often needs addressing isn’t a personality flaw, it’s a specific, nameable fear of judgment, one that even a few hours of the right kind of practice can measurably ease.