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Gender Differences in Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Competitive Behavior

Jeffrey Carpenter, Rachel Frank and Emiliano Huet-Vaughn (emiliano.huet-vaughn@pomona.edu)
Additional contact information
Rachel Frank: Yale Law School
Emiliano Huet-Vaughn: Pomona College

No 10626, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Gender differences in competitive behavior have been well documented by economists and other social scientists; however, the bulk of the research addresses competition with others and excludes other economically relevant competition that may contribute to the gender pay gap. In this paper, we ask: How does gender affect how individuals react to competition against themselves? In a laboratory experiment in which some subjects compete against others and some compete against themselves, we find women select into intrapersonal competition at significantly higher rates than interpersonal competition, the first such findings. We find perseverance or "grit" to be a poor predictor of interpersonal competition selection, but find familial effects such as parent's education and number of brothers to be correlated with competition selection.

Keywords: labor; real effort; tournament; competition; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 J16 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cse, nep-exp and nep-gen
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2018, 77, 170 - 176

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Journal Article: Gender differences in interpersonal and intrapersonal competitive behavior (2018) Downloads
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