Do women receive less blame than men? Attribution of outcomes in a prosocial setting

Nisvan Erkal, Lata Gangadharan () and Boon Han Koh

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 210, issue C, 441-452

Abstract: We examine gender biases in the attribution of leaders’ outcomes to their choices versus luck. Leaders make unobservable investment choices that affect the payoffs of group members. High investment is costly to the leader but increases the probability of an outcome with a high payoff. We observe gender biases in the attribution of low outcomes. Low outcomes of male (female) leaders are attributed more to their selfish decisions (bad luck). These biases are driven by male evaluators. We find no gender differences in the attribution of high outcomes.

Keywords: Gender biases; Beliefs; Attribution biases; Leadership; Social preferences; Laboratory experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D91 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268123001075
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:210:y:2023:i:c:p:441-452

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.04.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().