Gender and competition in adolescence: task matters

Anna Dreber, Emma Essen () and Eva Ranehill ()

Experimental Economics, 2014, vol. 17, issue 1, 154-172

Abstract: We look at gender differences among adolescents in Sweden in preferences for competition, altruism and risk. For competitiveness, we explore two different tasks that differ in associated stereotypes. We find no gender difference in competitiveness when comparing performance under competition to that without competition. We further find that boys and girls are equally likely to self-select into competition in a verbal task, but that boys are significantly more likely to choose to compete in a mathematical task. This gender gap diminishes and becomes non-significant when we control for actual performance, beliefs about relative performance, and risk preferences, or for beliefs only. Girls are also more altruistic and less risk taking than boys. Copyright Economic Science Association 2014

Keywords: Competitiveness; Risk preferences; Altruism; Adolescents; Gender differences; Experiment; C91; D03; J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (141)

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Working Paper: Gender and Competition in Adolescence: Task Matter (2013)
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DOI: 10.1007/s10683-013-9361-0

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