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  • 2021
  • Working Paper
  • HBS Working Paper Series

Stereotypes and Belief Updating

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Manuela Collis and Leena Kulkarni
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:68
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Abstract

We explore how feedback shapes, and perpetuates, gender gaps in self-assessments. Participants in our experiments take tests of their ability across different domains. We elicit their beliefs of their performance before and after feedback. We find that, even after the provision of highly informative feedback, gender stereotypes influence posterior beliefs, beyond what a Bayesian model would predict. This is primarily because both men and women update their beliefs more positively in response to good news when it arrives in a more gender congruent domain (i.e., more male-typed domains for men, more female-typed domains for women), fueling persistence in gender gaps.

Keywords

Beliefs; Stereotypes; Self-assessment; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Information; Performance; Perception

Citation

Coffman, Katherine B., Manuela Collis, and Leena Kulkarni. "Stereotypes and Belief Updating." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-068, January 2019. (Revised June 2021.)
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About The Author

Katherine B. Coffman

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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Related Work

    • 2021
    • Faculty Research

    Stereotypes and Belief Updating

    By: Katherine B. Coffman, Manuela Collis and Leena Kulkarni
Related Work
  • Stereotypes and Belief Updating By: Katherine B. Coffman, Manuela Collis and Leena Kulkarni
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