{"title":"Signaling confidence","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106691","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We study gender differences in confidence in an experimental hiring market, focusing on how signaling confidence affects the likelihood of being hired. We document that moderate (versus low) levels of confidence enhance the probability of being hired, while excessive confidence, characterized by high performance estimates and high certainty, diminishes employment prospects. Men display greater levels of confidence than women, and this gender gap widens in forward-looking scenarios, where performance estimates are provided ex ante rather than ex post. These findings provide a cautionary reminder of the potential negative consequences of signaling excessive confidence. Hence, encouraging both men and women to signal performance predictions that are aligned with reality instead of simply advising women to be more confident may well be a safer way to foster equity in labor market outcomes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726812400297X","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We study gender differences in confidence in an experimental hiring market, focusing on how signaling confidence affects the likelihood of being hired. We document that moderate (versus low) levels of confidence enhance the probability of being hired, while excessive confidence, characterized by high performance estimates and high certainty, diminishes employment prospects. Men display greater levels of confidence than women, and this gender gap widens in forward-looking scenarios, where performance estimates are provided ex ante rather than ex post. These findings provide a cautionary reminder of the potential negative consequences of signaling excessive confidence. Hence, encouraging both men and women to signal performance predictions that are aligned with reality instead of simply advising women to be more confident may well be a safer way to foster equity in labor market outcomes.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is devoted to theoretical and empirical research concerning economic decision, organization and behavior and to economic change in all its aspects. Its specific purposes are to foster an improved understanding of how human cognitive, computational and informational characteristics influence the working of economic organizations and market economies and how an economy structural features lead to various types of micro and macro behavior, to changing patterns of development and to institutional evolution. Research with these purposes that explore the interrelations of economics with other disciplines such as biology, psychology, law, anthropology, sociology and mathematics is particularly welcome.