The power of stereotyping and confirmation bias to overwhelm accurate assessment: the case of economics, gender, and risk aversion

Nelson, Julie A.

doi:10.1080/1350178x.2014.939691

Cited by 77 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 71 publications

(89 reference statements)

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“…Feminist scholarship on economic methodology has long argued that expanding the community of scholars to include those who have different experiences and beliefs -not simply relying on a set of mathematical tools -is what has the best potential to give economic studies a degree of objectivity and reliability (Sandra Harding 1995;Julie A. Nelson 1996). The current study illustrates the importance of such an expanded community.…”

Section: Implications For Behavioral Researchmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Julie A. Nelson (2014), reviewing studies using a variety of elicitation procedures, presents quantitative and qualitative evidence that findings of greater female risk taking, as well of "no evidence of a difference," have tended to be systematically under -reported. In contrast, Paolo Crosetto, Antonio Filippin, and Janna Heider (2014), based on a more focused review of studies that use the particular technique of measuring risk preferences in Charles A.…”

Section: Possible Confirmation Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…11 While arguments may be made for cases of efficient "statistical discrimination" when underlying differences are large and are expensive to observe, this is not the case for risk preferences. 12 The survey of the risk preference literature in Nelson (2014) finds that the most precise estimates suggest d ≈ 0.13. Filippin and Crosetto (2014), pooling data from fifty-four "Holt and Laury" studies, estimate a magnitude for d of "about a sixth of a standard deviation" (26).…”

Section: Implications For Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nelson (2014Nelson ( , 2015 introduced some tools for expressing substantive size to the behavioral economics literature and applied them a set of studies on gender and risk (distinct from the set reviewed here). Antonio Filippin and Paolo Crosetto (2014) and Muriel Niederle (2014) have since adopted one of these toolsCohen's d (to be explained below).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Not-So-Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking

Nelson

2015

Feminist Economics

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Based on a growing body of experimental and other studies, two recent economics survey articles claim to find "strong evidence" that women are "fundamental[ly]" more risk-averse than men. Yet, much of the literature fails to clearly distinguish between differences that hold at the individual level (categorical differences between men and women) and patterns that appear only at the aggregate level (statistically detectable differences in men's and women's distributions, such as different means). There is a resulting problem of possible misinterpretation, as well as a dearth of appropriate attention to substantive significance. Additionally, one of the two surveys suffers from problems of statistical validity, possibly due to confirmation bias. Applying appropriate, expanded statistical techniques to the same data, this study finds substantial similarity and overlap between the distributions of men and women in risk taking, and a difference in means that is not substantively large.

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Section: Implications For Behavioral Researchmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Possible Confirmation Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Not-So-Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking

Nelson

2015

Feminist Economics

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“…Considering only the statistical significance of results can be misleading, especially for those studies providing policy advice and guidance. Moreover, it could also lead to confirmation bias, potentially contributing to an increase in damaging gender stereotyping (Nelson, 2013a(Nelson, , 2013bJordan-Young, 2010). In particular, confirmation bias has been previously detected in gender differences literature (Nelson, 2013a).…”

Section: The Difference Between Statistical Significance and Substantmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate social responsibility

Calabrese

Costa

Rosati

2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

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The literature on business ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability includes many studies on gender differences, however the results are often contrasting. In particular, there has not yet been full agreement on the role and significance of gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of responsible corporate conduct. An extensive review of the research on the subject reveals that the published studies have not dealt with the substantive significance of gender differences, and as a result, the size of such differences is unknown. The current study analyses both the statistical and the substantive significance of gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate responsibility, also examining the influence of age and education. The analysis is carried out on a remarkably large sample of 908 clients, pertaining to 12 of the largest Italian banks. The overall resultsshow that there is a small substantive difference between women's and men's average expectations, with women showing higher average values than men. This result holds generally true with variation of education levels and age groups. Young females show the highest average values of expectations, and the significance of gender differences decreases with age. In contrast, the perception of corporate social responsibility does not show significant gender differences, either at the general level or when the analyses are repeated by education levels and age groups. The paper introduces the use of a standardized measure of effect size for analysing the substantive significance of gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate social responsibility. This novel approach increases results reliability and, accordingly, the effectiveness of company or policy maker strategies in designing, planning, implementing and assessing sustainability initiatives.

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Economics, Considered

Nelson

2020

Gender, Considered

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The power of stereotyping and confirmation bias to overwhelm accurate assessment: the case of economics, gender, and risk aversion

Cited by 77 publications

References 71 publications

Not-So-Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking

Not-So-Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking

Gender differences in customer expectations and perceptions of corporate social responsibility

Economics, Considered

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