Research on Swedish school children has found that boys tend to be overconfident about their grades in mathematics, while girls tend to be underconfident. We find similar results for El Salvadorian children. Mathematics is considered a masculine task and we show that these findings do not carry over to a gender neutral task (social science), where both sexes tend to be overconfident. We find that girls in a single-sex school are more underconfident in their mathematics abilities than girls in a co-ed school, which may suggest that gender stereotypes become reinforced in single-sex environments.
KeywordsGenderOverconfidencePeer GroupStereotype
Andersen, S., Bulte, E., Gneezy, U., & List, J. (2008). Do women supply more public goods than men? Preliminary experimental evidence from matrilineal and patriarchal societies. American Economic Re view, 98, 376-381. doi:10.1257/aer.98.2.376
Beckmann, D., & Menkhoff, L. (2008). Will women be women? Analyzing the gender difference among financial experts. Kyklos, 61, 364-384. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6435.2008.00406.x
Beyer, S. (1990). Gender differences in the accuracy of self-evaluations of performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 960-970. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.59.5.960
Beyer, S., & Bowden, E. (1997). Gender differences in self-perceptions: Convergent evidence from three measures of accuracy and bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 157-172. doi:10.1177/0146167297232005
Booth, A. L., & Nolen, P. (2012a). Gender differences in risk behaviour: Does nurture matter? Economic Journal, 122, F56-F78. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02480.x
Booth, A. L., & Nolen, P. (2012b). Choosing to compete: How different are girls and boys? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 81, 542-555. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2011.07.018
Campbell, A. (2002). A mind of her own: The evolutionary psychology of women. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198504986.001.0001
Croson, R., & Gneezy, U. (2009). Gender differences in preferences. Journal of Economic Literature, 47, 448-474. doi:10.1257/jel.47.2.448
Dahlbom, L., Jakobsson, A., Jakobsson, N., & Kotsadam, A. (2010). Gender and overconfidence: Are girls really overconfident? Applied Economics Letters, 18, 325-327. doi:10.1080/13504851003670668
Deaves, R., Lüders, E., & Schroder, M. (2010). The dynamics of over confidence: Evidence from stock market forecasters. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 17, 402-412. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2010.05.001
Dreber, A., von Essen, E., & Ranehill, E. (2011). Outrunning the gender gap: Boys and girls compete equally. Experimental Economics, 14, 567-582. doi:10.1007/s10683-011-9282-8
Eckel, C., & Grossman, P. (2008). Differences in the economic decisions of men and women: Experimental evidence. In C. Plott, & V. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of experimental results (Vol. 1, Chapter 57, pp. 509-519). New York: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/S1574-0722(07)00057-1
Estes, R., & Jinos, H. (1988). The gender gap on Wall Street: An empirical analysis of confidence in investment decision making. Journal of Psychology, 122, 577-590. doi:10.1080/00223980.1988.9915532
Fellner, G., & Maciejovsky, B. (2007). Risk attitude and market behavior: Evidence from experimental asset markets. Journal of Economic Psychology, 28, 338-350. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2007.01.006
Gneezy, U., Niederle, M., & Rustichini, A. (2003). Performance in competitive environments: Gender differences. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 1049-1074. doi:10.1162/00335530360698496
Gneezy, U., & Rustichini, A. (2004). Gender and competition at a young age. American Economic Review, 94, 377-381. doi:10.1257/0002828041301821
Gneezy, U., Leonard, K., & List, J. (2006). Gender differences in competition: Evidence from a matrilineal and a patriarchal society. Econometrica, 77, 1637-1664. doi:10.1126/science.1154094
Guiso, L., Monte, F., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2008). Culture, gender, and math. Science, 320, 1164-1165. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2010.05.003
Günther, C., Ekinci, A., Schwieren, C., & Strobel, M. (2010). Women can’t jump?—An experiment on competitive attitudes and stereotype threat. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 75, 395 401.
Hausmann, R., Tyson, L. D., & Zahidi, S. (2012). The global gender gap report 2012. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_Report_2012.pdf
Hoxby, C. (2000). Peer effects in the classroom: Learning from gender and race variation. NBER Working Paper 7867.
Jakobsson, N., & Kotsadam, A. (2010). Do attitudes toward gender equality really differ between Norway and Sweden? Journal of European Social Policy, 20, 142-159. doi:10.1177/0958928709358790
Johansson-Stenman, O., & Nordblom, K. (2010). Are men really more overconfident than women? A natural field Experiment on exam behavior. Working Papers in Economics No. 461, University of Gothenburg.
Koellinger, P., Minniti, M., & Schade, C. (2007). “I think I can, I think I can”: Overconfidence and entrepreneurial behaviour. Journal of Economic Psychology, 28, 502-527. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2006.11.002
Lundberg, M., Fox, P. & Punchchar, J. (1994). Highly confident but wrong: Gender differences and similarities in confidence judgements. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 114-121. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.86.1.114
Meier-Pesti, K., & Penz, E. (2008). Sex or gender? Expanding the sex-based view by introducing masculinity and femininity as predictors of financial risk taking. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29, 180-196. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2007.05.002
Nekby, L., Skogman Thoursie, P., & Vahtrik, L. (2008). Gender and self-selection into a competitive environment: Are women more overconfident than men? Economics Letters, 100, 405-407. doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2008.03.005
Niederle, M., & Vesterlund, L. (2007). Do women shy away from competition? Do men compete too much? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122, 1067-1101. doi:10.1162/qjec.122.3.1067
Ortmann, A., & Tichy, L. (1999). Gender differences in the laboratory: Evidence from prisoner’s dilemma games. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 39, 327-339. doi:10.1016/S0167-2681(99)00038-4
Palomino, F., & Peyrache, E. A. (2010), Psychological bias and gender agwe gap. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 76, 563-573. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2010.07.004
Soll, J,. & Klayman, J. (2004). Overconfidence in interval estimates. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 299-314. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.30.2.299
Svensson, O. (1981). Are we all less risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers? Acta Psychologica, 47, 143-148. doi:10.1016/0001-6918(81)90005-6
Tidemann, J. (2000). Parents’ gender stereotypes and teachers’ beliefs as predictors of children’s concept of their mathematical ability in elementary school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 144-151. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.92.1.144