Intrepid, imprudent, or impetuous? The effects of gender threats on men's financial decisions.

Abstract

Among the conjectured causes of the recent U.S. financial crisis is the hyper-masculine culture of Wall Street that promotes extreme risk-taking. In two experiments, we found that threats to their manhood motivated men to take greater financial risks and favor immediate (vs. delayed) fiscal rewards. In Experiment 1, men placed larger bets during a gambling game after a gender threat as compared to men in an affirmation condition. In Experiment 2, after a gender threat, men pursued an immediate financial payoff rather than waiting for interest to accrue, but only if they believed their decision was public. When the decision was private, gender-threatened men did not show the same desire for immediate reward. These results suggest that gender threats may shift men's financial decisions toward more risky and short-sighted public choices.

The power of stereotyping and confirmation bias to overwhelm accurate assessment: the case of economics, gender, and risk aversion

“…A literature in psychology has, in fact, grown up around the question of whether manipulations of gender salience and stereotype threat could explain observed sex differences (Carr & Steele, 2010;Ronay & Kim, 2006;Weaver, Vandello, & Bosson, 2013). Carr and Steele (2010), for example, create a 'stereotype threat' situation for women in a laboratory experiment, by asking subjects to record their gender before they were asked to do a lottery exercise, and describing these exercises as testing their mathematical abilities.…”

A Man’s (Precarious) Place

“…First, although the literature generally accepts that threats to manhood lead to assertive behaviors, existing research tends to rely on a narrow range of threat manipulations. For example, providing men with feedback that they scored low on measures of masculinity (Vandello et al, 2008) or asking them to perform a stereotypically feminine task (Bosson,Vandello,Burnaford,Weaver,& Wasti,593491P SPXXX10.1177/0146167215593491Personality and Social Psychology BulletinNetchaeva et al Weaver, Vandello, & Bosson, 2013) both have been shown to threaten men. However, it has yet to be established which behaviors enacted by women threaten men.…”

Masculinities Through a Cross‐Disciplinary Lens: Lessons from Sociology and Psychology

“…Under some conditions of challenge, men perceive masculinity to be (more) precarious than femininity and perceive aggression as a means for asserting (and re‐asserting) one's masculinity (Weaver et al ). Within this literature on precarious manhood, challenged men are also more likely to behave in assertive ways toward their bosses (Netchaeva et al ) and to engage in riskier financial decision‐making (Weaver et al ).…”