Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Exploring gender differences in effort before competition

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自2021年美国救援计划法案(公法117-2)。竞争在全球劳动力市场日益普遍，获奖者将获得不成比例的奖励。先前的研究表明，竞争力方面的性别差异--平均而言，女性的竞争力低于男性--可能会导致劳动力市场结果中持续存在的性别差异。因此，关于比赛中的性别差异的研究大多集中在：1)了解性别差异的根源；2)设计干预措施，鼓励女性更多地参与竞争。然而，对女性和男性是否以及如何对竞争做出不同反应的考虑较少。由于过去的研究表明，女性比男性更不自信，更不愿承担风险，这可能在一定程度上解释了她们不愿竞争的原因，因此当女性参加竞争时，她们可能会花更多的时间准备比赛。这项研究的第一个目的是检查女性是否比男性花更多的时间准备任务，在这些任务中，她们的表现将被评估，特别是当她们的表现被与竞争对手进行评估时。本论文的第二个目的是检验关于任务执行中的性别差异的信念是否也会影响赛前准备的性别差异。此前，性别差异被证明会影响自信和表现。实验是通过一个在线市场进行的，参与者在那里根据他们在各种任务中的表现获得报酬。了解个人对竞争情况的反应可能有助于解决群体之间的经济差异，包括劳动力市场结果中持续存在的性别差异。例如，如果竞争加剧了在表演前付出的努力(即准备)的性别差异，这可能会影响女性的劳动产出、职业晋升、实现令人满意的工作与生活平衡的能力，甚至影响她们进入或留在竞争环境中的决定。由于这是一个新的研究领域，未来有很多有希望和令人兴奋的探索途径，所有这些都有可能为促进性别平等的政策提供参考。研究人员假设，女性会比男性花更多的时间准备，特别是在比赛之前，部分原因是她们平均比男性更不喜欢冒险和自信。我们还将测试预期互动的边界条件，通过检查关于表演中的性别差异的信念如何影响比赛前准备的决定。研究人员在一个在线市场上对这些假设进行了实验测试，在这个市场上，参与者的任务表现受到激励。在第一个实验中，他们操纵参与者是根据竞争性支付方案(即，对他们表现的激励更高，但他们必须超过研究中的另一个人才能从他们的表现中赚取任何东西)还是根据非竞争性支付方案(即，对他们表现的激励是有保证的，但更低)。参与者将有权选择在进入研究的激励阶段之前完成与激励任务非常相似的无限数量的练习问题。在第二个实验中，他们操纵了参与者对竞争性支付方案下任务绩效性别差异的看法。具体地说，参与者被随机分配学习一篇科学文章的结果，这些文章要么指出男性的优势，要么指出女性在这项任务上的优势。与第一个实验类似，参与者可以选择在进入比赛之前完成无限量的练习问题。在这两项研究中，兴趣的主要因变量是为激励任务做准备的时间。据预测，女性在比赛前会选择比男性做更多的准备，特别是当她们被引导相信男性可能具有表现优势的时候。这项拟议的工作将通过为一项富有成效的工作提供基础，从而促进知识的发展，该工作专注于男性和女性如何对竞争做出不同的反应，以及它可能对女性产生的经济影响。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Competitions are increasingly prevalent in the global labor market, where winners are disproportionately rewarded. Prior work has suggested that gender differences in competitiveness, with women being less competitive, on average, than men, may contribute to persistent gender disparities in labor market outcomes. As a result, much of the research on gender differences in competitions has focused on i) understanding the sources of the gender difference and ii) designing interventions to encourage women to compete more. Less consideration, however, has been paid to whether and how women and men may differently respond to competitions. Because past research suggests that women are less confident and more risk-averse than men, and this may, in part, explain their reluctance to compete, women may spend more time preparing for competitions when they do compete. The first aim of this research is to examine whether women spend more time than men preparing for tasks where their performance will be evaluated, and specifically, when their performance is being evaluated against a competitor. The second aim of this dissertation is to test whether beliefs about gender differences in performance on a task, which have previously been shown to affect confidence and performance, also affect gender differences in preparation before competition. Experiments are conducted using an online marketplace, where participants are paid for their performance on various tasks. Understanding how individuals respond to competitive situations may help address economic disparities across groups, including persistent gender differences in labor market outcomes. If, for instance, competitions exacerbate gender differences in the amount of effort exerted (i.e., preparing) before performance, this may affect women’s labor output, career advancement, their ability to achieve a satisfying work-life balance, and even their decision to enter or stay in competitive environments. As this is a new area of research, there are many promising and exciting avenues for future exploration, all of which have the potential to inform policies that promote greater gender equality.The researchers hypothesize that women will spend more time preparing than men, especially before competitions, in part because they are, on average, less risk-seeking and confident than men. We will also test boundary conditions of the anticipated interaction by examining how beliefs about gender differences in performance shape decisions to prepare before competitions. The researchers experimentally test these hypotheses in an online marketplace where participant performance on the task is incentivized. In the first experiment they manipulate whether participants will be paid according to a competitive payment scheme (i.e., incentives for their performance are higher, but they must outperform another individual in the study to earn anything for their performance) or a non-competitive payment scheme (i.e., incentives for their performance are guaranteed, but lower). Participants will have the option to complete an unlimited amount of practice problems that closely resemble the incentivized task before entering the incentivized stage of the study. In the second experiment, they manipulate participants’ beliefs about gender differences in performance on a task under a competitive payment scheme. Specifically, participants are randomly assigned to learn about results from a scientific article that either i) point to a male advantage or ii) point to a female advantage on the task. Similar to the first experiment, participants have the option to complete an unlimited amount of practice problems before moving on to the competition. Across both studies, the main dependent variable of interest is amount of time spent preparing for the incentivized task. It is predicted that women will choose to prepare more than men before a competition, especially when they are led to believe that males may have a performance advantage. The proposed work will advance knowledge by providing the foundation for a fruitful line of work focused on how men and women differently respond to competitions, and its possible economic ramifications for women.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.