Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

The Emergence of Male Leadership in Competitive Environments

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The experiment consists of:

  1. Individuals were asked to do as many correct additions as possible.
  2. More than a year later, individuals are divided in stratified groups (so there is at least one woman) and first to recall their past performance, and then to submit to the group how well they think they will do in a subsequent competition against other groups.
  3. The groups are asked to select a representative to compete against others.

…underrepresentation of women [as representatives of a group] is mainly driven by men being overconfident when they recall their own ability (View Highlight)

Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) demonstrate that women can be absent from competitive environments because they ‘dislike’ being in competitive settings (compared to men). That is, women select themselves out of competitive environments even though they would be financially better off if they decided to compete (View Highlight)

Malmendier and Tate (2005, 2008) show that CEOs – a group where women are underrepresented (Bertrand and Hallock, 2001; Wolfers, 2006) – not only possess high degrees of overconfidence but also that this distorts their investment decisions. (View Highlight)

New highlights added 2023-02-24

ho had already performed the real-effort task 15 months before participating in the current experiment. We took advantage of this fact to ask subjects, using an incentive compatible procedure, to recollect their past performance. If there is a gender difference in the recollection of past performance and groups are unaware of it, then low-ability but overconfident men will end up being chosen over high-ability but underconfident women.1 In addition to remembering their past performance, we asked subjects to make known to their groups what their expected performance is, although their statements did not have to be truthful. For groups to make the best decision, individuals must truthfully reveal their true ability to others. Therefore, if there is a gender difference in the willingness of individuals to exaggerate their own ability (e.g., compared to women, men might dislike revealing they have a low ability, or they might be more willing to lie and overstate their own abilities) then groups could end up selecting low-ability men that claim to be high-ability over high-ability women that do not overstate (or even understate) their ability. Finally, we introduce an agency problem by giving an additional financi (View Highlight)

n. Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) demonstrate that women can be absent from competitive environments because they ‘dislike’ being in competitive settings (compared to men). That is, women select themselves out of competitive environments even though they would be financially better off if they decided to compete (View Highlight)

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