Beliefs about Gender

Pedro  Bordalo; Katherine Baldiga Coffman; Nicola  Gennaioli; Andrei   Shleifer

Article | American Economic Review | March 2019

Beliefs about Gender

by Pedro Bordalo, Katherine Baldiga Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer

Abstract

We conduct laboratory experiments that explore how gender stereotypes shape beliefs about ability of oneself and others in different categories of knowledge. The data reveal two patterns. First, men’s and women’s beliefs about both oneself and others exceed observed ability on average, particularly in difficult tasks. Second, overestimation of ability by both men and women varies across categories. To understand these patterns, we develop a model that separates gender stereotypes from misestimation of ability related to the difficulty of the task. We find that stereotypes contribute to gender gaps in self-confidence, assessments of others, and behavior in a cooperative game.

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Perspective; Prejudice and Bias; Gender;

Format: Print

Find at Harvard Read Now

Citation:

Bordalo, Pedro, Katherine Baldiga Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli, and Andrei Shleifer. "Beliefs about Gender." American Economic Review 109, no. 3 (March 2019): 739–773.

We explore the idea that judgment by representativeness reflects the workings of episodic memory, especially interference. In a new laboratory experiment on cued recall, participants are shown two groups of images with different distributions of colors. We find that i) decreasing the frequency of a given color in one group significantly increases the recalled frequency of that color in the other group and ii) for a fixed set of images, different cues for the same objective distribution entail different interference patterns and different probabilistic assessments. Selective retrieval and interference may offer a foundation for the representativeness heuristic, but more generally for understanding the formation of probability judgments from experienced statistical associations.

We run an experiment that features a novel task with deliberation to explore how stereotypes shape group decision-making. We find that women are less likely to be rewarded for their ideas in male-typed domains when gender is known. This is partly due to discrimination and partly due to differences in self-promotion. External analysis of the chat data provides further insights. Though men and women do not vary in their communication styles, coders display pervasive stereotypes, associating warmth with women and competence and negativity with men. We also find that warmer participants, particularly warmer women, are under-rewarded by their groups.

Faculty & Research

Beliefs about Gender

Abstract

Citation:

About the Authors

More from these Authors