In Bloom: Gender Differences in Preferences among Adolescents

Anna Dreber, Emma von Essen () and Eva Ranehill ()
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Eva Ranehill: Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Postal: P.O. Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

No 734, SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract: We look at gender differences among adolescents in Sweden in preferences for altruism, risk and competition. We find that girls are more altruistic and less risk taking than boys. No gender differences are found comparing competitive performance with non-competitive performance in either a verbal or a mathematical task. Boys and girls are also equally likely to self-select into competition in the verbal task, but boys are significantly more likely to choose to compete in math. However, this gender gap diminishes and becomes non-significant when we control for performance beliefs relative to others, indicating that some of the gender gap in our sample is not due to preferences for competition per se.

Keywords: competitiveness; risk preferences; altruism; adolescents; gender differences; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2011-04-06, Revised 2012-07-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:hastef:0734

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