Linguistic signaling, emojis, and skin tone in trust games.

This paper reports the results of an experiment involving text-messaging and emojis in laboratory trust games executed on mobile devices. Decomposing chat logs, I find that trust increases dramatically with the introduction of emojis to one-shot games, while reciprocation increases only modestly. Skin tones embedded in emojis impact sharing and resulting gains-to the benefit of some and detriment to others. Both light and dark skin players trust less on receipt of a dark skin tone emoji-suggestive of statistical discrimination. In this way, computer-mediated communication leads to reduced gains for dark-skinned persons. These results highlight the complex social judgment that motivates trust in an anonymous counterpart

Gender penalties and solidarity — Teaching evaluation differentials in and out of STEM

Employing a comprehensive, ten-year data set of class-level observations and institutional data from a large US university, we explore gender disparities in STEM fields by isolating differences in student evaluations of teaching effectiveness (SETEs). Faculty teaching face-to-face or hybrid classes receive significantly higher scores on average when compared to themselves online — a premium that is independent of gender. In STEM fields, the face-to-face premium for males is double that for females. The gender composition of the class matters. As the percentage of female students increases, SETE scores increase on average for females teaching in STEM fields but not for males. These results have implications for the ongoing problem of retention of women in STEM fields

Collaboration and Gender Focality in Stag Hunt Bargaining

Knowing the gender of a counterpart can be focal in the willingness to collaborate in team settings that resemble the classic coordination problem. This paper explores whether knowing a co-worker’s gender affects coordination on the mutually beneficial outcome in a socially risky environment. In an experimental setting, subjects play a one-shot stag hunt game framed as a collaborative task in which they can “work together” or “work alone.” We exogenously vary whether workers know the gender of their counterparts pre-play. When gender is revealed, female players tend to gravitate to collaboration and efficient coordination regardless of the knowledge. Males, when knowingly paired with another male, tend to collaborate less, and thus, are less likely to coordinate on the Pareto optimal outcome. These results demonstrate one way that gender focality can lead to inefficient outcomes and provide insight for organizations looking to induce collaboration among workers

Shelter-in-place orders, loneliness, and collaborative behavior

The outbreak of COVID-19 resulted in numerous jurisdictions instituting “shelter-in-place\u27\u27 orders (SPOs). While designed to restrict or impede normal levels of social proximity, SPOs altered the way or degree to which workers interact with each other and have likely imposed a toll on employee well-being. The authors exploit the temporal and geographic variation in U.S. SPOs to investigate their effect on loneliness among online workers. Variation in loneliness is then linked to worker behavior in a simple two-person, collaborative task (a framed stag hunt). The analysis reveals a strong positive relationship between SPOs and loneliness on average, peaking during the wave associated with the most prolonged duration of isolation. SPOs disproportionately impacted workers in occupations not substantially involving teamwork or collaboration. As reported loneliness increases, the probability of an individual collaborating in a simple interactive workplace scenario decreases significantly. In the final survey wave, SPOs are scarcer, loneliness subsides, and cooperative behavior increases dramatically

Beauty Premiums Among Academics

This paper examines the effects of instructors’ attractiveness on student evaluations of their teaching. We build on previous studies by holding both observed and unobserved characteristics of the instructor and classes constant. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that many instructors, in addition to traditional teaching in the classroom, also teach in the online environment, where attractiveness is either unknown or less salient. We utilize multiple attractiveness measures, including facial symmetry software, subjective evaluations, and a novel, proxy methodology that resembles a “Keynesian Beauty Contest.” We identify a substantial beauty premium in face-to-face classes for women but not for men. While gender on its own does not impact teaching evaluation scores, female instructors rated as more attractive receive higher instructional ratings. This result holds across several beauty measures, given a multitude of controls and while controlling for unobserved instructor characteristics and skills. Notably, the positive relationship between beauty and teaching effectiveness is not found in the online environment, suggesting the observed premium may be due to discrimination