A new study led by scholars at New York University Abu Dhabi argues that prior research on gender differences in human behavior is flawed, as it has historically focused on White participants.
The authors recruited a sample of nearly 2,500 participants in the United States, ensuring the participants reflected the national population of both men and women from Black, Hispanic, and White backgrounds. The research team then conducted a series of experiments to measure race and gender differences in competitiveness and risk tolerance, two of the most widely studied behavioral measurements in economics and social sciences. Competitiveness was measured by whether individuals chose a competitive payment scheme over a fixed piece-rate schedule, while risk tolerance was measured by individuals’ choices from a standard menu of lotteries varying in risk exposure and payoffs.
According to the experiments, 56 percent of Black participants and 58 percent of Hispanic participants were classified as competitive, compared to 47 percent of White participants. While Black and Hispanic participants were more competitive, White participants were 9.2 percent more risk-tolerant than both Black and Hispanic participants. When examining gender differences alone, men were 16 percent more likely to choose the competitive payment option than women. Men were also 9.9 percent more tolerant of risk than women overall.
However, gender gaps in competitiveness and risk tolerance were not found among Black participants. While Hispanic men were found to be more competitive and risk-tolerant than Hispanic women, Black women were just as competitive and were not less risk-tolerant than Black men.
“The data reveal that racial and ethnic differences in risk tolerance and competitiveness are substantial among U.S. adults, and comparable in magnitude to the widely studied gender gap,” the authors write. “Not only do Whites — the most commonly studied racial group in behavioral science — differ from Blacks and Hispanics in terms of competitiveness and risk, but the gender gaps observed among Whites do not generalize to Blacks. These results raise fundamental questions about the generalizability of existing conclusions in the literature.”