Emotion and Adaptation

For good reasons, economists have had a long-standing preference for studying peoples' revealed preferences; that is, looking at individuals' actual choices and decisions rather than their stated intentions or subjective reports of likes and dislikes. Yet people often make choices that bear a mixed relationship to their own happiness. A large literature from behavioral economics and psychology finds that people often make inconsistent choices, fail to learn from experience, exhibit reluctance to trade, base their own satisfaction on how their situation compares with the satisfaction of others and depart from the standard model of the rational economic agent in other ways. If people display bounded rationality when it comes to maximizing utility, then their choices do not necessarily reflect their "true" preferences, and an exclusive reliance on choices to infer what people desire loses some of its appeal. Direct reports of subjective well-being may have a useful role in the measure

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Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being

Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.

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Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students

Economics Of Discrimination

The converging roles of men and women are among the grandest advances in society and the economy in the last century. These aspects of the grand gender convergence are figurative chapters in a history of gender roles. But what must the “last” chapter contain for there to be equality in the labor market? The answer may come as a surprise. The solution does not (necessarily) have to involve government intervention and it need not make men more responsible in the home (although that wouldn't hurt). But it must involve changes in the labor market, especially how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhance temporal flexibility. The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours. Such change has taken off in various sectors, such as technology, science, and health, but is less apparent in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds. (JEL J3, J16, ...

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A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter

Women outnumber men in undergraduate enrollments, but they are much less likely than men to major in mathematics or science or to choose a profession in these fields. This outcome often is attributed to the effects of negative sex-based stereotypes. We studied the effect of such stereotypes in an experimental market, where subjects were hired to perform an arithmetic task that, on average, both genders perform equally well. We find that without any information other than a candidate's appearance (which makes sex clear), both male and female subjects are twice more likely to hire a man than a woman. The discrimination survives if performance on the arithmetic task is self-reported, because men tend to boast about their performance, whereas women generally underreport it. The discrimination is reduced, but not eliminated, by providing full information about previous performance on the task. By using the Implicit Association Test, we show that implicit stereotypes are responsible for the initial average bias in sex-related beliefs and for a bias in updating expectations when performance information is self-reported. That is, employers biased against women are less likely to take into account the fact that men, on average, boast more than women about their future performance, leading to suboptimal hiring choices that remain biased in favor of men.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/12/4403.full.pdf

How stereotypes impair women’s careers in science

Economic and social interaction takes place between individuals with heterogeneous characteristics. We investigate experimentally the emergence and informal enforcement of different contribution norms to a public good in homogeneous and different heterogeneous groups. When punishment is not allowed all groups converge towards free-riding. With punishment, contributions increase and differ distinctly across groups and individuals with different induced characteristics. We show econometrically that these differences are not accidental but enforced by punishment. The enforced contribution norms are related to fairness ideas of equity regarding contribution possibilities but not regarding earnings. Individuals with different characteristics tacitly agree on the norm to be enforced, even if this leads to large payoff differences. Our results also emphasize the role of details of the environment that may alter focal contribution norms in an important way.

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Enforcement of Contribution Norms in Public Good Games with Heterogeneous Populations

https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/3426/NormEnforcement_final.pdf

Standard observed characteristics explain only part of the differences between men and women in education choices and labor market trajectories. Using an experiment to derive students’ levels of overconfidence, and preferences for competitiveness and risk, this paper investigates whether these behavioral biases and preferences explain gender differences in college major choices and expected future earnings. In a sample of high ability undergraduates, we find that competitiveness and overconfidence, but not risk aversion, is systematically related with expectations about future earnings: individuals who are overconfident and overly competitive have significantly higher earnings expectations. Moreover, gender differences in overconfidence and competitiveness explain about 18% of the gender gap in earnings expectations. These experimental measures explain as much of the gender gap in earnings expectations as a rich set of control variables, including test scores and family background, and they are poorly proxied by these same control variables, underscoring that they represent independent variation. While expected earnings are related to college major choices, the experimental measures are not related with college major choice.

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Preferences and Biases in Educational Choices and Labour Market Expectations: Shrinking the Black Box of Gender

This article experimentally explores how the enforcement of cooperative behaviour in a social dilemma is facilitated through institutional as well as emotional mechanisms. Recent studies emphasise the importance of anger and its role in motivating individuals to punish free riders. However, we find that anger also triggers retaliatory behaviour by the punished individuals. This makes the enforcement of a cooperative norm more costly. We show that in addition to anger, ‘social’ emotions like guilt need to be present for punishment to be an effective deterrent of uncooperative actions. They play a key role by subduing the desire of punished individuals to retaliate and by motivating them to behave more cooperatively in the future.

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Ernesto Reuben

Papers

How stereotypes impair women’s careers in science

Enforcement of Contribution Norms in Public Good Games with Heterogeneous Populations

Enforcement of Contribution Norms in Public Good Games with Heterogeneous Populations

Preferences and Biases in Educational Choices and Labour Market Expectations: Shrinking the Black Box of Gender

The Importance of Emotions for the Effectiveness of Social Punishment