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Does Unfairness Hurt Women? The Effects of Losing Unfair Competitions

Piasenti, Stefano ; Valente, Marica ; van Veldhuizen, Roel LU orcid and Pfeifer, Gregor (2023) In Working Papers
Abstract
How do men and women differ in their persistence after experiencing failure in a competitive environment? We tackle this question by combining a large online experiment (N=2,086) with machine learning. We find that when losing is unequivocally due to merit, both men and women exhibit a significant decrease in subsequent tournament entry. However, when the prior tournament is unfair, i.e., a loss is no longer necessarily based on merit, women are more discouraged than men. These results suggest that transparent meritocratic criteria may play a key role in preventing women from falling behind after experiencing a loss.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Working paper/Preprint
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Competitiveness, Gender, Fairness, Machine learning, Online experiment, C14, C90, D91, J16
in
Working Papers
issue
2023:7
pages
53 pages
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
acc8177b-af9e-4cc4-bb8b-8abe3ff48fa7
date added to LUP
2023-08-31 12:31:24
date last changed
2024-03-08 14:49:13
@misc{acc8177b-af9e-4cc4-bb8b-8abe3ff48fa7,
  abstract     = {{How do men and women differ in their persistence after experiencing failure in a competitive environment? We tackle this question by combining a large online experiment (N=2,086) with machine learning. We find that when losing is unequivocally due to merit, both men and women exhibit a significant decrease in subsequent tournament entry. However, when the prior tournament is unfair, i.e., a loss is no longer necessarily based on merit, women are more discouraged than men. These results suggest that transparent meritocratic criteria may play a key role in preventing women from falling behind after experiencing a loss.}},
  author       = {{Piasenti, Stefano and Valente, Marica and van Veldhuizen, Roel and Pfeifer, Gregor}},
  keywords     = {{Competitiveness; Gender; Fairness; Machine learning; Online experiment; C14; C90; D91; J16}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{08}},
  note         = {{Working Paper}},
  number       = {{2023:7}},
  series       = {{Working Papers}},
  title        = {{Does Unfairness Hurt Women? The Effects of Losing Unfair Competitions}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/173496266/WP23_7.pdf}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}