Experimenter Bias Across Gender Differences (original) (raw)
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
We test the effect of changing the experimenter's gender in the trust game. Our assumption is that experimental subjects seek to discover the true purpose of the experiment. Thus, the gender of experimenter may produce a bias to confirm experimenter's expectations in a test on the gender effect. We find that the presence of a female experimenter influences positively trust and reciprocity. This result supports the hypothesis that women are perceived as less selfish than men. JEL CODES: C90, C91, J16.
Gender differences in economic experiments
Revista Internacional de Sociología, 2012
This paper reviews the experimental economics literature on gender differences concerning four subjects: risk aversion, trust, deception and leadership. The vast majority of the articles we have revised document gender differences in behavior; differences which could be explained by sex-role stereotypes and/or hormonal differences. * Authors acknowledge the financial support from the MCI (SEJ2007-62081/ECON), Junta de Andalucía-Excelencia (P07.SEJ.02547) and Instituto de la Mujer (2007 I+D+I/031).
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Routledge Siena Studies in Political Economy, 2008
We test the effect of changing the experimenter's gender in the trust game. Our assumption is that experimental subjects seek to discover the true purpose of the experiment. Thus, the gender of experimenter may produce a bias to confirm experimenter's expectations in a test on the gender effect. We find that the presence of a female experimenter influences positively trust and reciprocity. This result supports the hypothesis that women are perceived as less selfish than men.
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Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2012
We study the effects of experimental design on male and female behavior in a dictator game. Following social identity theory we investigate how experimental procedure may affect outcome through gender priming, i.e. the activation of gender stereotypes specifying that women behave altruistically and men egoistically. We prime subjects by asking them to indicate their gender in a questionnaire, before playing the game. In our experiment, such gender priming is effective (i.e. creates a gender difference in generosity) in gendermixed environments, but not in single-sex environments. Further, men are more sensitive to priming than women are.
Gender Differences in Trust and Reciprocity
Social Science Research Network, 2003
We thank Debajyoti Chakrabarty for invaluable insights in general and on modeling risk aversion in particular. We thank James Cox, Pushkar Maitra, Bradley Ruffle, Akila Weerapana, Brock Blomberg and Rachel Croson for multiple conversations and excellent feedback. Thanks are due to the participants in the session on "Trust and Reciprocity in Games" at the 2002 AEA meetings in Atlanta, the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Economic Science Association in Boston and to seminar participants at Wellesley College and University of Auckland for their comments. We are also indebted to the Faculty of Economics and Commerce, University of Melbourne, for providing the funds for this study.
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Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2010
Although discrimination remains prevalent, the reasons for its occurrence are still hotly debated. To disentangle vying explanations, researchers have begun using laboratory experiments. However, this research has not allowed, or studied, the effects of selection. In this paper, we examine discrimination in a Trust game where subjects can and cannot select partners. We find little evidence of discrimination without selection but significant evidence of discrimination with selection: specifically, subjects discriminate against their own gender in partner choice and levels of trust after partner selection. This pattern of discrimination is consistent with behavior documented in the social psychology literature on helping behavior. The discrimination cannot be explained by performance (trustworthiness), but is partially explained by tastes and beliefs towards each gender's trustworthiness.
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Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1999
We implement a prisoner's dilemma-type game in the laboratory to study whether men and women have different cooperation rates, and whether they respond differently to experiences in previous rounds. We find that women cooperate significantly more than men in the first round; this difference disappears by the last round. We attribute the latter result to the very similar reactions of men and women to experiences they have made in previous rounds. We also find that the gender composition of the subject pool has a significant impact on cooperative behavior.
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Research Papers in Economics, 2009
Several experimental studies on altruism have found women to be more generous than men. We investigate whether observed gender gaps in generosity can be explained by experimental setting, where some settings are more conducive than others to activating gender identity and social norms. In a dictator game we study priming along two dimensions: 1) some subjects enter their gender on the first page of the questionnaire (Pre) while others enter their gender on the last page (Post) and 2) some subjects are seated in single-sex rooms (Homogeneous) while others are seated in gender-mixed rooms (Mixed). It turns out that gender differences occur (women are more generous than men) only for the combination Pre and Mixed. The effect is driven by males: men are sensitive to priming, while women are not.
Gender Beliefs and Cooperation in a Public Goods game Experiment
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Abstract We study the role of gender beliefs for cooperation in a public goods game experiment. Controlling for risk preferences and for subjects' unconditional willingness to cooperate, we find that gender beliefs affect behavior in homogenous groups where the group composition was announced. JEL Classification: C72, C91 Key words: public good game, experiment, gender differences, gender beliefs