How Competitive are Female Professionals? A Tale of Identity Conflict

We develop and test experimentally the argument that gender/family and/or professional identities, activated through psychological priming, may influence preference for competition. We focus on female professionals for whom these identities may conflict and male professionals for whom they may be reinforcing. We primed MBA-student participants by administering questionnaires that concerned either gender/family or professional issues. Subsequently, participants undertook a real-effort task and chose between piece-rate and competitive-tournament compensation. Identity priming, moderated by gender, significantly affected preference for competitive pay. This relationship was partially mediated by beliefs about one‟s performance ranking. The implications of our results are profound. The decision to avoid competition made by many female professionals may be driven not by lack of ability, but rather by the increased salience of gender/family identity, influenced by marriage and motherhood over time. Indeed, activation of internalized identities might not only drive the experimental results, but also have strong implications for career choices and job performance of women, thus contributing to the observed gender and motherhood wage gaps.

How Competitive are Female Professionals? A Tale of Identity Conflict

We develop and test experimentally the argument that gender/family and/or professional identities, activated through psychological priming, may influence preference for competition. We focus on female professionals for whom these identities may conflict and male professionals for whom they may be reinforcing. We primed MBA-student participants by administering questionnaires that concerned either gender/family or professional issues. Subsequently, participants undertook a real-effort task and chose between piece-rate and competitive-tournament compensation. Identity priming, moderated by gender, significantly affected preference for competitive pay. This relationship was partially mediated by beliefs about oneÕs performance ranking. The implications of our results are profound. The decision to avoid competition made by many female professionals may be driven not by lack of ability, but rather by the increased salience of gender/family identity, influenced by marriage and motherhood over time. Indeed, activation of internalized identities might not only drive the experimental results, but also have strong implications for career choices and job performance of women, thus contributing to the observed gender and motherhood wage gaps.Experiment; Gender; Competitiveness; Identity; Priming; Family; Tournament

Gender and Generosity: Does Degree of Anonymity or Group Gender Composition Matter?

Employing a two-by-two factorial design that manipulates whether dictator groups are single or mixed-sex and whether procedures are single or double-blind, we examine gender effect in a standard dictator game. No gender effect was found in any of the experimental treatments. Moreover, neither single- versus mixed-sex groups nor level of anonymity had any impact on either male or female behavior.Anonymity; dictator game; experiment; gender; generosity; group composition; other-regarding; selfish

Trust, Reciprocity, and Guanxi in China: An Experimental Investigation

We examine the influence of social distance on levels of trust and reciprocity in China. Social distance, reflected in the indigenous concept of guanxi, is of central importance to Chinese culture. In Study 1, some participants participated in two financially salient trust games to measure behavior, one with an anonymous classmate and the other with an anonymous, demographically identical nonclassmate. Other participants, drawn from the same population, completed hypothetical surveys to gauge both hypothetical behavior and expectations of others. Social distance effects on actual and hypothetical behavior were statistically consistent. The results together corroborated the hypothesized negative relationship between trust and social distance. However, reciprocity was not responsive to social distance. Study 2 found that affect-based trust, but not cognition-based trust, played a mediating role in the relationship between social distance and interpersonal trust in a hypothetical scenario. We conclude that close guanxi ties in China engender affect-based trust, which is extended to shouren classmates. This is true despite the fact that no more cognition-based trust is placed nor reciprocity received or expected from classmates compared to demographically identical shengren nonclassmates.Experiment; Affect-based Trust; China; Guanxi; Reciprocity; Trust; Social Distance

Gender and Culture in a Threshold Public Goods Game: Japan versus Canada,

We compare male and female behavior in Japan and Canada in the context of a threshold public goods game with both a strong free-riding equilibrium and many socially efficient threshold equilibria. Although higher rewards produce higher contributions, neither culture nor gender has any significant impact on the equilibrium selected, the amount contributed or the provision success rate. Nonetheless, culture and gender do affect behavior. Japanese females coordinate significantly less closely than Canadian females, while Japanese males coordinate significantly less closely than either Canadian males or Canadian females around an equilibrium. Coordination is related both to conforming and less variable behavior.

The "Sales Agent" Problem: Effort Choice under Performance Pay as Behavior toward Risk

An investor's choice between safe and risky assets has long been seen as a behavior toward risk: more risk-averse investors buy more of the safe asset. Applying this intuition to incentive pay contracts, we develop a model and an experiment that show, in a very general setting, that the choice between work effort and leisure under given linear incentives depends on how the attendant financial risk interacts with effort. We find that if the risk multiplies with effort, risk-averse individuals work less, whereas under additive risk effort choice is little affected by risk preferences. Our findings complement the literature on worker selection into incentive pay contracts by showing that lower effort of the risk-averse is another type of behavior toward risk. Our study is relevant to practice as well, since many jobs, such as commission work, feature multiplicative rather additive risk

Gender and culture in a threshold public goods game: Japan versus Canada

We compare male and female behavior in Japan and Canada in the context of a threshold public goods game with both a strong free-riding equilibrium and many socially efficient threshold equilibria. Although higher rewards produce higher contributions, neither culture nor gender has any significant impact on the equilibrium selected, the amount contributed or the provision success rate. Nonetheless, culture and gender do affect behavior. Japanese females coordinate significantly less closely than Canadian females, while Japanese males coordinate significantly less closely than either Canadian males or Canadian females around an equilibrium. Coordination is related both to conforming and less variable behavior