(absolute and relative performance) and, if so, whether the effect varies by gender. Since it is impossible to prevent women from experiencing failure in competitive workplaces or entrepreneurial settings, it is important to understand how women who had self-selected into competition respond to failure and different types of negative feedback. Thus, this study aims to explore how women react to failure attributional feedback and whether it can mitigate the gender gap in persistence.
To address our research question, we conduct a large laboratory experiment with 667 subjects. Our design builds on the experiment in Buser and Yuan (2019). In our experiment, subjects perform a real effort task of calculating the sum of five two-digit numbers in two rounds.
In both rounds, participants choose a compensation scheme of either receiving a piece-rate payment (PR) that pays for their own performance without regard to the performance of the assigned anonymous opponent or entering a winner-takes-all competition that pays for their own performance if the subject’s score is higher than the opponent’s and zero otherwise. Having multiple competitions while allowing participants to decide about their competition entry rather than forcing everyone to compete, enables us to create a setting that mimics the reality of competition entry and then test subsequent competitiveness. Accounting for the willingness to enter into a competition enables us to obtain more accurate results and draw more meaningful conclusions about the gender differences in persistence after losing the competition. The performance of participants of both compensation schemes is compared to the performance of a randomly matched opponent from the same session. Next, participants receive their performance feedback (absolute and relative score) and an announcement of whether they have won or lost.
This is followed by attributional feedback attributing the loss/win to bad luck, lack of effort, or lack of ability depending on the treatment group except for the control group that receives no attributional feedback. Conditional on the score, winning and losing in our experimental design can be seen as exogenous. Participants then decide whether they want to compete or work for a piece rate in the next round.
Our findings contribute to the understanding of the gender differences in persistence after a competition loss and how they may shape the gender gap in career choices and labor market participation. Our analysis focuses on the subjects who have an initial preference for competition and competed in the first round. The analysis reveals several findings, the first being, we find no significant gender difference in the effect of losing and receiving performance feedback on the subsequent willingness to compete. Women are just as likely as males to compete again after losing and learning about their performance. Second, we show significant gender differences in
the willingness to compete after losing a competition and receiving feedback that attributes the loss to bad luck and ability. Compared to men, women are more likely to compete when their loss is attributed to bad luck. In contrast, women are significantly less likely to compete after losing when their loss is attributed to a lack of ability relative to their male counterparts. Third, we find no gender differences in the effect of effort attribution. Conditional on competing, women are just as likely as men to compete again after losing when their loss is attributed to a lack of effort.
Lastly, we find that for women attributing failure to bad luck has no significant effect on their confidence (beliefs) while still having a significant positive effect on their re-entry into competition (action). In contrast, attributing failure to lack of ability has both an effect on beliefs and actions.
Our study has important implications for the negative feedback design and thus women’s underrepresentation in the labor market, especially in competitive fields. It is impossible for women working in competitive workplaces, going through the process of senior recruitment, or seeking to secure venture capital to sustain their startups, to avoid experiencing failure.
Nevertheless, to potentially prevent women who have an initial preference for competition from dropping out after failure (leaky pipeline), our findings suggest providing performance feedback that emphasizes the measures of absolute and relative performance. Furthermore, in the case of attributional feedback, the findings suggest emphasizing the role of effort or the role of luck as opposed to the role of ability when providing attributional feedback. In other words, any feedback provided to women should refrain from attributing failure to their lack of ability. Such feedback mechanisms would potentially retain failing women who have preferences for competition in their competitive fields. Preventing competitive women from dropping out would positively contribute to women’s participation in the labor market, business survival, job creation, innovation and economic growth.
Our work contributes to several strands of the literature. First, we contribute to the literature on the gender differences in preference for competition (e.g., Croson & Gneezy, 2009;
Niederle & Vesterlund, 2007, 2011) by showing that the gender differences in competition entry do not predict gender differences in persistence for the subpopulation of women who self-select into competition. Second, we contribute to the established performance feedback literature (Alan
& Ertac, 2019; Berlin & Dargnies, 2016; Buser, Gerhards, & van der Weele, 2018; Wozniak, Harbaugh, & Mayr, 2014) and the growing literature on gender differences in reactions to competition outcomes (Buser, 2016; Buser & Yuan, 2019; Mobius, Niederle, Niehaus, &
Rosenblat, 2014) by showing that there are no gender differences in persistence after losing a
competition when performance feedback is provided. Women and men choose to compete again after losing at a similar rate. Third, we contribute to the literature on the attributional theory and achievement motivation (Schuster, Forsterlung, & Weiner, 1989; Weiner, 1985, 2000; Weiner et al., 1987) and extend the performance feedback literature by examining the gender differences in response to attributional feedback. We show that attributional feedback of a competition loss using commonly cited causal attributions of luck, effort, and ability has a significant effect in shaping the gender difference in persistence after losing. Lastly, we contribute to growing literature on the drivers and implications of gender diversity in the labor market (Fernandez-mateo & Rubineau, 2019; Gompers & Wang, 2017; Hoogendoorn et al., 2013; Lyngsie & Foss, 2017; Solal &
Snellman, 2019). We show the significant impact of attributional feedback on women’s persistence in the competition, which potentially indicates that failure attributional feedback is in part shaping women’s underrepresentation in competitive and high-reward domains.
The remainder of this paper is structured into five sections. Section 2 introduces the relevant literature on the gender differences in competitiveness and the effect of competition loss.
Section 3 illustrates the experimental design and general procedure. Section 4 introduces the data.
Section 5 reports the results. Section 6 discusses the study findings and implications. Finally, Section 7 summarizes the study conclusions.