Do Gender‐variant Preferences for Competition Persist in the Absence of Performance?

Abstract

The well‐established gender gap in preferences for competition has been attributed to gender‐variant feelings about performing in competitive environments. Using a novel task with agency, in which subjects experience competition but cannot perform, we find evidence that performing may be sufficient but not necessary to generate gender‐variant preferences for competition. This suggests that the gender‐gap cannot be eliminated by correcting beliefs alone; that eliminating performance—for example, routinizing tasks—may not eliminate the gender gap; and that there may be heretofore unidentified determinants of preferences for competition—for example, men may prefer payment schemes that are based on social comparison. (JEL J16, C91, J24)

Entrepreneurs embrace competition: evidence from a lab-in-the-field study

“…After completing the brief survey, which familiarized participants with the interview situation, they played two rounds of an incentivized competition game, where they chose between a competitive winner-takes-all tournament payment scheme and a non-competitive piecerate payment scheme. 13 In each round, individuals had 11 Ifcher and Zarghamee (2016) demonstrate that a dice competition is sufficient to generate gender-variant preferences for competition, even when controlling for risk preferences. 12 One might be tempted to conclude that competing based on rolling dice might remove any element of competition and, hence, attitudes toward competition might no longer be relevant, just risk preferences (cf., Große and Riener 2010).…”

“…Enjoyment of competition, however, as defined above (cf., Deutsch 1949;Lazear 1999;Smither and Houston 1992), deviates from such a perspective, such that individuals derive a utility from the particular structure of the institutional regime that they are embedded in as well as from the fact that outcomes of individuals they are interacting with are negatively related to the own outcomes. See Ifcher and Zarghamee (2016) for an alternative discussion of why competition based on rolling dice is not the same as a lottery. 13 One might suspect that asking for the job and entrepreneurial intentions before the experiment might through priming affect behavior in the experiment.…”

“…No performance feedback was provided before the end of the experiment. In the dice task, participants rolled five times a pair of fair six-sided dice (with three white and three black sides), earning one point for each die that displays a black side (cf., Ifcher and Zarghamee 2016).…”

“…If individuals enter competitions despite believing that they are unlikely to win, their preferences for competition are not solely driven by their desire to win. 4 Moreover, we isolate enjoyment of competition from achievement motivations by showing that the effect holds for both a skill-related task, i.e., verifying simple single-digit equations (Mayr et al 2012), and a skill-independent task, i.e., rolling dice (Ifcher and Zarghamee 2016). In contrast to the mathbased competition, the outcomes of the dice task are determined by chance only and, therefore, individuals' selection into this dice-based competition does not tend to be driven by skill-related considerations, such as individuals' striving for personal development or achievement motivations.…”

Explaining Gender Differences in Confidence and Overconfidence in Math

“…Men's overconfidence is a main determinant of their excessive participation in competition (Niederle and Vesterlund 2007;Buser et al 2014). Men have a stronger preference for competition than women, partly due to their beliefs (self-assessments about abilities) (Ifcher and Zarghamee 2016). Women develop self-identities based on stereotypical gender roles and socially endorsed values that conflict with their professional identities and competitiveness (Cadsby et al 2013).…”