How stress affects performance and competitiveness across gender

Because many key career events, such as examinations and interviews, involve competition and stress, gender differences in response to these factors could help to explain the labor market gender gap. In a laboratory experiment, we manipulate psychosocial stress using the Trier Social Stress Test and confirm that this is effective by measuring salivary cortisol level and heart rate. Subjects perform in a real-effort task under both tournament and piece-rate incentives, and we elicit willingness to compete. We find that women under heightened stress perform worse than women in the control group when compensated with tournament incentives, whereas there is no treatment difference under piece-rate incentives. For men, stress does not affect output under competition or under piece rate. The gender gap in willingness to compete is not affected by stress, but stress decreases competitiveness overall, which is related to performance for women. Our results could explain gender differences in performance under competition, with implications for hiring practices and incentive structures in firms

How stress affects performance and competitiveness across gender

Since many key career events, such as exams and interviews, involve competition and stress, gender differences in response to these factors could help to explain the labor-market gender gap. In a laboratory experiment, we manipulate psychosocial stress using the Trier Social Stress Test, and confirm that this is effective by measuring salivary cortisol. Subjects perform a real-effort task under both tournament and piece-rate incentives and we elicit willingness to compete. We find that women under heightened stress do worse than women in the control group when compensated with tournament incentives, while there is no treatment difference for performance under piece-rate incentives. For males, stress does not affect output under competition. We also find that stress decreases willingness to compete overall, and for women, this is related to performance. These results help to explain previous findings on gender differences in performance under competition both in and out of the lab

How stress affects performance and competitiveness across gender

We study how psychosocial stress affects willingness to compete and performance under tournament incentives across gender. We use a laboratory economic experiment in which a task is compensated under both tournament and piece-rate schemes and elicit subjects' willingness to compete. Stress is exogenously introduced through a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test, and stress response is measured by salivary cortisol levels. We find that stress reduces willingness to compete. For female subjects, this can be explained by performance: while tournament incentives increase output in the control group, women in the stress treatment actually perform worse when competition is introduced. For males, output is not affected by the stress treatment and lower competitiveness seems to be preference-based. These results may explain previous findings that men and women react differently to tournament incentives in experiments, as well as gender gaps on the labor market, since many key career events involve competition in stressful settings (e.g. entrance exams or job interviews)