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Eva Ranehill. Photo.

Eva Ranehill

Professor

Eva Ranehill. Photo.

Gender and competition in adolescence: task matters

Author

  • Anna Dreber
  • Emma von Essen
  • Eva Ranehill

Summary, in English

We look at gender differences among adolescents in Sweden in preferences for competition, altruism and risk. For competitiveness, we explore two different tasks that differ in associated stereotypes. We find no gender difference in competitiveness when comparing performance under competition to that without competition. We further find that boys and girls are equally likely to self-select into competition in a verbal task, but that boys are significantly more likely to choose to compete in a mathematical task. This gender gap diminishes and becomes non-significant when we control for actual performance, beliefs about relative performance, and risk preferences, or for beliefs only. Girls are also more altruistic and less risk taking than boys.

Publishing year

2014-03

Language

English

Pages

154-172

Publication/Series

Experimental Economics

Volume

17

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Economics

Keywords

  • Competitiveness
  • Risk preferences
  • Altruism
  • Adolescents
  • Gender differences
  • Experiment
  • C91
  • J16

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1573-6938