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The Gender Gap in Confidence: Expected But Not Accounted For

By: Christine L. Exley and Kirby Nielsen
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:92
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Abstract

We investigate how the gender gap in confidence affects the views that evaluators (e.g., employers) hold about men and women. If evaluators fail to account for the confidence gap, it may cause overly pessimistic views about women. Alternatively, if evaluators expect and account for the confidence gap, such a detrimental impact may be avoided. We find robust evidence for the former: even when the confidence gap is expected, evaluators fail to account for it. This “contagious” nature of the gap persists across many interventions and types of evaluators. Only a targeted intervention that facilitates Bayesian updating proves (somewhat) effective.

Keywords

Confidence; Experiments; Gender; Perception; Values and Beliefs; Performance Evaluation; Analysis

Citation

Exley, Christine L., and Kirby Nielsen. "The Gender Gap in Confidence: Expected But Not Accounted For." Working Paper, October 2022.

About The Author

Christine L. Exley

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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