RAPID: Collaborative Research: Gender Composition and Decision Making: The Impact of HF243

本项目评估性别构成对群体决策的影响。研究人员预计，群体结果将根据性别构成而有所不同，这不仅是因为不同的个人偏好，还因为男性和女性在决策过程中使用不同的策略。他们的框架预测，女性主导群体更有可能鼓励个人选择中间结果，而典型的女性过程策略在定位和采用这种中间偏好方面做得更好。这些结果在一系列的实验室实验中得到了证实。在现实世界中，对其概念框架的实证证实表明，在董事会、委员会和立法机构等决策群体中，更大的性别多样性可能会产生更民主的结果，也就是说，女性代表人数的增加意味着决策群体更有可能权威性地分配中位数个人的价值，而不是那些在偏好分布尾部的人。爱荷华州议会最近通过了一项立法，要求在2012年1月1日之前在地方董事会和委员会中实现性别平衡，这为测试这一框架的大规模实地实验提供了一个直接的机会。这项研究有几个潜在的重要回报。该项目有助于了解决策机构内的性别平衡如何影响这些机构的进程和结果。如果研究人员是正确的，一个明显的暗示是，增加决策机构的性别平等可能会导致更多的合作和民主的决策过程，并产生更接近普遍的中位数偏好的结果。这一发现将挑战主流的理论框架，即认为女性在政策制定过程中发挥作用是因为她们的政策偏好与男性明显不同。这个项目将有助于从概念上更清楚地了解性别对政策制定的重要性，说明人类的偏好对群体的性别构成很敏感，因为用于决策的策略因群体的性别构成而异。除了对政治行为的理论贡献之外，还有对性别平衡决策机构的政策影响。作为政治学家，他们的重点主要是面向公共政策制定机构，但其影响超出了学科界限。这项研究并不局限于公共部门的概括。任何决策机构，无论是公司、非营利组织还是公共机构，都包含在他们的假设中。因此，这项研究可能会对广泛的决策情况产生影响。

This project assesses the impact of gender composition on decision making in groups. The investigators expect that group outcomes will vary based on gender composition, not just because of differing individual-level preferences, but because males and females use different strategies in the decision making process. Their framework predicts that female dominant groups are more likely to encourage individuals to prefer a median outcome, and that the typically female process strategies do a better job of locating and adopting this median preference. These results have been confirmed in a series of laboratory experiments.Real-world, empirical confirmation of their conceptual framework would suggest that greater gender diversity in decision making groups, like boards, commissions, and legislatures, is likely to result in more democratic outcomes, i.e., that increasing female representation means decision making groups are more likely to authoritatively allocate the values of the median individual rather than those in the tails of a preference distribution. The Iowa General Assembly recently passed legislation requiring gender balance on loacl boards and commissions by January 1, 2012, presenting an immediate opportunity for a large-scale field experiment testing this framework.This research has several potentially important payoffs. The project contributes to understanding how gender balance within decision making bodies shapes the processes and outcomes of such bodies. If the investigators are correct, a clear implication is that increasing gender equity with decision making bodies is likely to result in more collaborative and democratic decision making processes, and produce outcomes closer to the universal median preferences. This finding would challenge the prevailing theoretical framework that argues that women make a difference in policy makeing processes because they have distinctly different policy preferences from males. This project will help provide a conceptually clearer understanding of why gender matters to policy making by illustrating that human preferences are sensitive to the gender composition of groups, and because the strategies used to make decisions differ by group gender composition.There are implications beyond the theoretical contributions to political behavior and the policy implications for gender balancing decision making bodies. As political scientists, their focus is primarily oriented towards public policy making bodies but the implications go beyond disciplinary boundaries. The research is not limited to public sector generalizations. Any decision making body, be it corporate, non-profit, or public, is included in their hypotheses. As such, this research could have implications for a wide range of decision making situations.