Descriptive norms provide social information on others' typical behaviors and have been shown to lead to prescriptive outcomes by "nudging" individuals towards norm compliance in numerous settings. This paper examines whether descriptive norms lead to prescriptive outcomes in the gender domain. We examine whether such social information can influence the gender distribution of candidates selected by employers in a hiring context. We conduct a series of laboratory experiments where 'employers' decide how many male and female 'employees' they want to hire for male-and female-typed tasks and examine whether employers are more likely to hire more of one gender when informed that others have done so as well. In this setup descriptive norms do not have prescriptive effects. In fact, descriptive norms do not affect female employers' hiring decisions at all and lead to norm reactance and backlash from male employers when informed that others have hired more women.

Descriptive norms provide social information on others’ typical behaviors and have been shown to lead to prescriptive outcomes by “nudging” individuals towards norm compliance in numerous settings. This paper examines whether descriptive norms lead to prescriptive outcomes in the gender domain. We examine whether such social information can influence the gender distribution of candidates selected by employers in a hiring context.  We conduct a series of laboratory experiments where ‘employers’ decide how many male and female ‘employees’ they want to hire for male- and female-typed tasks and examine whether employers are more likely to hire more of one gender when informed that others have done so as well. In this set-up descriptive norms do not have prescriptive effects. In fact, descriptive norms do not affect female employers’ hiring decisions at all and lead to norm reactance and backlash from male employers when informed that others have hired more women.

This chapter examines how people in Oman, the United States, and Vietnam deal with trust situations. It offers two trust-fostering mechanisms—a mitigation-based approach (“insurance”), decreasing the principal’s cost of betrayal, and a prevention-based approach (“bonus”), increasing the agent’s benefits of trustworthiness. What choices principals make were measured, as well as how agents respond to them and how both parties’ behaviors compare to a situation where insurance or bonus was assigned by chance. About two-thirds of our principals prefer the safety of the insurance mechanism and about one-third prefer sending a bonus, making themselves vulnerable to the agent. This vulnerability pays off by tripling the likelihood of trustworthiness compared to when insurance is chosen. Still, when a bonus is chosen, only about half of the agents reward trust. This fraction is insufficient to make the principals whole. In terms of expected payoffs principals would be better off with insurance.

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