No Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete When Competing against Self
Though women are less willing than men to compete against others, they are equally willing to compete against their own past achievements, with similar boosts to performance.
Cite this Article
Apicella, Coren L., Elif E. Demiral, and Johanna Mollerstrom. "No gender difference in willingness to compete when competing against self." American Economic Review 107.5 (2017): 136-40.
Apicella, C. L., Demiral, E. E., & Mollerstrom, J. (2017). No gender difference in willingness to compete when competing against self. American Economic Review, 107(5), 136-40.
Apicella, Coren L., Elif E. Demiral, and Johanna Mollerstrom. "No gender difference in willingness to compete when competing against self." American Economic Review 107, no. 5 (2017): 136-40.
Authors
This article was written by , and , and was originally published by American Economic Review in May of 2017Across societies and situational contexts, women are generally less willing than men to compete. The gender gap in willingness to compete contributes to gender disparities in competitive fields, competitive roles, and wages. Nonetheless, competition also has positive effects, increasing workplace performance and productivity. Previous research has looked at how to reduce the gender gap in competition, and there are several societal factors that come into play. For example, a GAP study shows that women are less competitive than men in patriarchal societies, but this result reverses in matrilineal societies, where women are more competitive than men. Efforts to reduce the gender gap in competition have focused on encouraging women’s participation through initiatives including affirmative action or gender-specific competitions. These programs are difficult to implement in workplaces, and presume that competition with others is most beneficial. In this study, the authors examine an alternative view by comparing competition against others with competition against oneself (such as a employee competing against their earlier performance in order to improve). They tested participants’ preference for fixed compensation or competitive compensation with higher risk and higher reward, when competing against a variety of other participants or against one’s own past performance.
Women were less willing than men to compete against others, but equally willing to compete against themselves.
- In a laboratory experiment using an arithmetic task, women were significantly less willing than men to compete (37.5% of women vs. 57.7% of men) when they were offered a choice between fixed compensation for each correct answer or double-or-nothing competition against another participant.
- There was no statistically significant difference in women’s and men’s willingness to compete in the arithmetic task (41.8% of women vs. 55.1% of men) when participants were offered a choice between fixed compensation or competition against one’s own past performance.
- In an online experiment using a counting task, women were significantly less willing than men to compete (27.8% of women vs. 40.0% of men) when they were offered a choice between fixed compensation or competition against another participant with no additional information.
- Women were significantly less willing than men to compete (21.9% of women vs. 34.1% of men) when they were offered a choice between fixed compensation or competition against another participant known to be of the same gender.
- There was no statistically significant difference in women’s and men’s willingness to compete (30.6% of women vs. 33.3% of men) when participants were offered a choice between fixed compensation or competition against another participant known to have the same past performance on the task.
- There was no significant difference in women’s and men’s willingness to compete (35.7% of women vs. 31.1% of men) when participants were offered a choice between fixed compensation or competition against one’s own past performance,
- In the laboratory experiment, women rated themselves as more risk-averse (6.09, scale range: 1-10) and less overconfident (0.63, scale range: 0-1) than men did (7.30 and 0.73 respectively), contributing to their choice not to compete against others. This pattern was also observed in the online experiment.
- Between a first round with fixed compensation and a second round with competitive compensation, participants’ performance improved non-significantly by an average of about 20%, regardless of whether they were competing against another participant or against themselves. This improvement in scores could be due to learning the task or to competition.
In short, the authors replicated previous findings that women are less willing than men to compete against others, but discovered that women and men are equally willing to compete against their own past performance. Restructuring workplaces and other competitive environments around self-competition rather than other-competition may reduce gender disparities while retaining the positive effects of competition on performance.
The study recruited 204 laboratory participants (50.5% female) and 994 online participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (49.9% female). In each experiment, participants completed three rounds of a simple task with varying compensation. In the first round, they received a fixed piece rate for each correct answer. In the second round, they received a tournament rate: double the piece rate if they scored better than a competitive benchmark, the piece rate for a tie, and nothing if they scored below the competitive benchmark. In the third round, participants were given a choice of the piece rate or the tournament rate. The laboratory experiment used an arithmetic task. For the second round, participants were randomized to compete either against another random participant or against their own first-round performance. The online experiment used a counting task. For the second round, participants were randomized to one of four conditions: competition against another entirely unknown participant, against a participant known to be of the same gender, against a participant known to have the same first-round performance, or against their own first-round performance. In both experiments, participants who chose the tournament rate for the third round competed against their competitor’s second-round performance, or against their own second-round performance if they competed chose to compete against themselves. Finally, participants rated their willingness to take risks (a measure of risk aversion), and guessed whether they had won the second-round tournament (a measure of confidence), or whether they had improved between the second and third rounds if they competed against themselves.
MLA: Apicella, Coren L., Elif E. Demiral, and Johanna Mollerstrom. “No Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete When Competing against Self.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings (forthcoming).
APA: Apicella, C.L., Demiral, E.E. & Mollerstrom, J. (in press). No gender difference in willingness to compete when competing against self. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings.
Chicago: Apicella, Coren L., Elif E. Demiral, and Johanna Mollerstrom. “No Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete When Competing against Self.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings (forthcoming.)
Cite this Article
Apicella, Coren L., Elif E. Demiral, and Johanna Mollerstrom. "No gender difference in willingness to compete when competing against self." American Economic Review 107.5 (2017): 136-40.
Apicella, C. L., Demiral, E. E., & Mollerstrom, J. (2017). No gender difference in willingness to compete when competing against self. American Economic Review, 107(5), 136-40.
Apicella, Coren L., Elif E. Demiral, and Johanna Mollerstrom. "No gender difference in willingness to compete when competing against self." American Economic Review 107, no. 5 (2017): 136-40.
