IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v83y2012i1p82-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The importance of being confident; gender, career choice, and willingness to compete

Author

Listed:
  • Kamas, Linda
  • Preston, Anne

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which gender differences in choosing to enter competitive tournaments are due to women's lower taste for competition or differences in confidence. We examine three types of confidence and find that confidence measured by expected ranking is the most important determinant of decisions to enter tournaments. Conditional on ability, this measure eliminates gender differences in winner-take-all tournaments and, when entered with risk measures, eliminates differences in ranked compensation tournaments. When the sample is split by career choice, there are no gender differences for students in STEM fields, and in the humanities and the social sciences differences can be explained by confidence. However, for business school students, gender differences in willingness to compete in winner-take-all tournaments persist even after accounting for risk aversion and confidence. Men in business set themselves apart from the rest of the population (men and women alike) with the highest levels of tournament entry and the most positive performance responses to competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Kamas, Linda & Preston, Anne, 2012. "The importance of being confident; gender, career choice, and willingness to compete," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 82-97.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:83:y:2012:i:1:p:82-97
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.06.013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268111001582
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2011.06.013?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Niels D. Grosse & Gerhard Riener, 2010. "Explaining Gender Differences in Competitiveness: Gender-Task Stereotypes," Jena Economics Research Papers 2010-017, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    2. Günther, Christina & Ekinci, Neslihan Arslan & Schwieren, Christiane & Strobel, Martin, 2010. "Women can't jump?--An experiment on competitive attitudes and stereotype threat," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 395-401, September.
    3. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk, 2011. "Performance Pay and Multidimensional Sorting: Productivity, Preferences, and Gender," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 556-590, April.
    4. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1067-1101.
    5. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    6. Uri Gneezy & Aldo Rustichini, 2004. "Gender and Competition at a Young Age," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 377-381, May.
    7. Cason, Timothy N. & Masters, William A. & Sheremeta, Roman M., 2010. "Entry into winner-take-all and proportional-prize contests: An experimental study," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 604-611, October.
    8. Uri Gneezy & Kenneth L. Leonard & John A. List, 2009. "Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence From a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(5), pages 1637-1664, September.
    9. Bjorn Bartling & Ernst Fehr & Michel Andre Marechal & Daniel Schunk, 2009. "Egalitarianism and Competitiveness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 93-98, May.
    10. Uri Gneezy & Muriel Niederle & Aldo Rustichini, 2003. "Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1049-1074.
    11. Vandegrift, Donald & Yavas, Abdullah, 2009. "Men, women, and competition: An experimental test of behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 554-570, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Müller, Julia & Schwieren, Christiane, 2012. "Can personality explain what is underlying women’s unwillingness to compete?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 448-460.
    2. David Wozniak & William T. Harbaugh & Ulrich Mayr, 2014. "The Menstrual Cycle and Performance Feedback Alter Gender Differences in Competitive Choices," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 161-198.
    3. Silvia Saccardo & Aniela Pietrasz & Uri Gneezy, 2018. "On the Size of the Gender Difference in Competitiveness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(4), pages 1541-1554, April.
    4. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    5. Zhang, Peilu & Zhang, Yinjunjie & Palma, Marco, 2018. "Social Norms and Competitiveness: My Willingness to Compete Depends on Who I am (supposed to be)," MPRA Paper 89727, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. John, June Park, 2017. "Gender differences and the effect of facing harder competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 201-222.
    7. Dato, Simon & Nieken, Petra, 2014. "Gender differences in competition and sabotage," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 64-80.
    8. Berge, Lars Ivar Oppedal & Bjorvatn, Kjetil & Garcia Pires, Armando Jose & Tungodden, Bertil, 2015. "Competitive in the lab, successful in the field?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 303-317.
    9. Migheli, Matteo, 2010. "Gender at work: Productivity and incentives," POLIS Working Papers 142, Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS.
    10. Migheli, Matteo, 2015. "Gender at work: Incentives and self-sorting," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 10-18.
    11. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Frank, Rachel & Huet-Vaughn, Emiliano, 2018. "Gender differences in interpersonal and intrapersonal competitive behavior," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 170-176.
    12. Wozniak, David, 2009. "Choices About Competition: Differences by gender and hormonal fluctuations, and the role of relative performance feedback," MPRA Paper 21097, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Matthias Sutter & Daniela Rützler, 2010. "Gender differences in competition emerge early in life," Working Papers 2010-14, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    14. Comeig, Irene & Grau-Grau, Alfredo & Jaramillo-Gutiérrez, Ainhoa & Ramírez, Federico, 2016. "Gender, self-confidence, sports, and preferences for competition," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 1418-1422.
    15. Irene Comeig & Ainhoa Jaramillo-Gutiérrez & Federico Ramírez, 2017. "Toward Value Co-Creation: Increasing Women’s Presence in Management Positions through Competition against a Set Target," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-10, October.
    16. Frick, Bernd, 2011. "Gender differences in competitiveness: Empirical evidence from professional distance running," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 389-398, June.
    17. Becchetti, Leonardo & Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Ottone, Stefania & Solferino, Nazaria, 2013. "Allocation criteria under task performance: The gendered preference for protection," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 96-111.
    18. De Paola, Maria & Gioia, Francesca & Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2015. "Are females scared of competing with males? Results from a field experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 117-128.
    19. Booth, Alison & Nolen, Patrick, 2012. "Choosing to compete: How different are girls and boys?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 542-555.
    20. S. Cotton, Christopher & Li, Cheng & McIntyre, Frank & P. Price, Joseph, 2015. "Which explanations for gender differences in competition are consistent with a simple theoretical model?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 56-67.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender; Confidence; Competition; Risk aversion; Business major; STEM major;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:83:y:2012:i:1:p:82-97. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.