The Gender Gap in Confidence: Is it contagious?

Last registered on August 06, 2024
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The Gender Gap in Confidence: Is it contagious?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014082
Initial registration date
August 01, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
August 06, 2024, 3:46 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
China
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Jun Zhao
Affiliation
South China Normal University
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-09-01
End date
2024-12-31
Keywords
Behavior, Gender, Lab
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
Women are often underrepresented and underpaid in various sectors of the labor market. Numerous studies suggest that the gender confidence gap may influence the "supply" of women, affecting their participation in the workforce. For instance, this gap can lead to women having lower salary expectations, being less likely to pursue competitive fields, being less vocal, and being less inclined to apply for challenging roles. However, there is less understanding of how this confidence gap impacts the "demand" side, which includes how employers perceive and value female employees. If this confidence gap is "contagious" from workers to employers, it could lead to more negative beliefs about women, contributing to poorer outcomes for them and exacerbating gender discrimination. In this study, we revisit an experiment by Exley and Nielsen (2024), which examined the transmission of the confidence gap from female workers to evaluators, such as employers, colleagues, and peers. We test the robustness of these findings using a new sample from China and introduce a new attention intervention to explore the issue of attention in belief updating.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Zhao, Jun. 2024. "The Gender Gap in Confidence: Is it contagious?." AEA RCT Registry. August 06. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14082-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The experiment includes two primary groups of participants: "workers" and "evaluators." Workers are incentivized to provide accurate self-evaluations of their performance on a test. Evaluators, on the other hand, are incentivized to accurately assess the workers by forming beliefs about their performance both before and after receiving information about the workers' self-evaluations. The purpose of the Worker Study is to explore gender differences in self-evaluation, while the Evaluator Study aims to investigate whether the confidence gap is contagious, potentially influencing evaluators' perceptions and beliefs about the workers.
Intervention (Hidden)
1. Baseline Treatment: This involves five stages: eliciting evaluators' prior beliefs, providing information about workers' self-evaluations, eliciting evaluators' posterior beliefs, eliciting evaluators' beliefs about the workers' confidence levels, and measuring evaluators' susceptibility to cognitive biases.
2. Attention Treatment: Here, we emphasize beliefs about confidence by eliciting evaluators' confidence beliefs before their posterior beliefs.
3. Attention-Reminder Treatment: In this variation, we add a reminder that women are typically less confident before eliciting the evaluators' posterior beliefs.
4. Calculation Treatment: To simplify the process of Bayesian updating, we provide evaluators with their implied Bayesian posterior beliefs before eliciting their posteriors.
5. Baseline Unknown Gender Treatment: Evaluators are asked about workers from "group 1" or "group 2" instead of gender-specific groups, removing explicit gender references.
6. Attention Unknown Gender Treatment: This treatment is similar to the Attention Treatment but without explicit gender references.
7. Attention-Reminder Unknown Gender Treatment: Like the Attention-Reminder Treatment, this also omits specific gender information.
8. Calculation Unknown Gender Treatment: Similar to the Calculation Treatment but without gender-specific labels.
Intervention Start Date
2024-10-01
Intervention End Date
2024-10-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
workers' self-evaluation, evaluators’ prior and posterior beliefs
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We recruited 3,600 participants through Credamo, a Chinese professional online research platform similar to MTurk or Prolific. Among these, 400 participants were assigned to the Worker Study, and 3,200 were assigned to the Evaluator Study. The evaluators were randomly assigned to one of eight treatments in the Evaluator Study.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
randomization done by a computer
Randomization Unit
individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
3600 adults
Sample size: planned number of observations
3600 adults
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
400 indivudals for one treatment in worker study; 400 individuals for each treatment in evaluator study
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials