Does Unfairness Hurt Women? The Effects of Losing Unfair Competitions
(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:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/acc8177b-af9e-4cc4-bb8b-8abe3ff48fa7
- author
- Piasenti, Stefano ; Valente, Marica ; van Veldhuizen, Roel LU and Pfeifer, Gregor
- organization
- publishing date
- 2023-08-14
- 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}}, }