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Are women more sensitive to the decision-making context?

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Miller, Luis
  • Ubeda, Paloma

Abstract

We conduct an experiment to assess gender differences across different economic contexts. Specifically, we test whether women are more sensitive to the decision-making context in situations that demand the use of different fairness principles. We find that women adopt more often than men conditional fairness principles that require information about the context. Furthermore, while most men adopt only one decision principle, most women switch between multiple decision principles. These results complement and reinforce Croson and Gneezy’s organizing explanation of greater context sensitivity of women.

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File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268111001594
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Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Volume (Year): 83 (2012)
Issue (Month): 1 ()
Pages: 98-104

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Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:83:y:2012:i:1:p:98-104
DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.06.014
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo

Keywords: Context-sensitivity; Distributive Justice; Gender differences; Laboratory experiments;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
  • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
  • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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  1. Ubeda, Paloma, 2014. "The consistency of fairness rules: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 88-100.
  2. James C. Cox & Cary A. Deck, 2006. "When Are Women More Generous than Men?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(4), pages 587-598, October.
  3. Dufwenberg, Martin & Muren, Astri, 2006. "Gender composition in teams," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 50-54, September.
  4. Uri Gneezy & Muriel Niederle & Aldo Rustichini, 2003. "Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 118(3), pages 1049-1074.
  5. Norman Frohlich & Joe Oppenheimer & Anja Kurki, 2004. "Modeling Other-Regarding Preferences and an Experimental Test," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 119(1_2), pages 91-117, 04.
  6. James Konow, 2003. "Which Is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 1188-1239, December.
  7. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2008. "Men, Women and Risk Aversion: Experimental Evidence," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, Elsevier.
  8. Alexander W. Cappelen & Astri Drange Hole & Erik Ø Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2007. "The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 818-827, June.
  9. James Andreoni & Lise Vesterlund, 2001. "Which is the Fair Sex? Gender Differences in Altruism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 116(1), pages 293-312.
  10. Bolton, Gary E. & Katok, Elena, 1995. "An experimental test for gender differences in beneficent behavior," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 48(3-4), pages 287-292, June.
  11. Alice Becker & Luis Miller, 2009. "Promoting justice by treating people unequally: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(4), pages 437-449, December.
  12. Buchan, Nancy R. & Croson, Rachel T.A. & Solnick, Sara, 2008. "Trust and gender: An examination of behavior and beliefs in the Investment Game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(3-4), pages 466-476, December.
  13. Werner Güth & Carsten Schmidt & Matthias Sutter, 2007. "Bargaining outside the lab - a newspaper experiment of a three-person ultimatum game," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(518), pages 449-469, 03.
  14. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  15. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 122(3), pages 1067-1101.
  16. C. Cadsby & Maroš Servátka & Fei Song, 2010. "Gender and generosity: does degree of anonymity or group gender composition matter?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(3), pages 299-308, September.
  17. Babcock, Linda, et al, 1995. "Biased Judgments of Fairness in Bargaining," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1337-1343, December.
  18. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
  19. James Konow, 2000. "Fair Shares: Accountability and Cognitive Dissonance in Allocation Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1072-1091, September.
  20. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Are Women More Sensitive to the Decision-Making Context?
    by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2010-12-09 14:23:45
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
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Cited by:

  1. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Joo Young Jeon, 2013. "Altruism, Anticipation, and Gender," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 13-06, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
  2. Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, 2015. "An experimental study of gender differences in distributive justice," Cuadernos de Economía - Spanish Journal of Economics and Finance, ELSEVIER, vol. 38(106), pages 27-36, Abril.
  3. Ismael Rodriguez-Lara & Luis Moreno-Garrido, 2012. "Modeling Inequity Aversion in a Dictator Game with Production," Games, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 3(4), pages 1-12, October.
  4. Sharma, Smriti, 2015. "Gender and distributional preferences: Experimental evidence from India," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 113-123.
  5. Mara Olekalns & Carol Kulik & Lin Chew, 2014. "Sweet Little Lies: Social Context and the Use of Deception in Negotiation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 120(1), pages 13-26, March.

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