Friends of the Behavioral Economics Club, this week we present the paper “Gender priming in solidarity games” by Cadaoas Tacneng, R. and Martin Puzon, K. A. (2021), in which authors investigate whether a difference exists between the women’s behavior and men’s behavior when it comes about being solidary regarding money.
We know that everyone has a social identity, which can be gender, ethnic, religious, national, and even corporate.
Research has shown that once one of these types of identities stands out above the others, people tend to behave according to that particular identity.
It is what the authors call “priming”.
The purpose of the article is to examine how gender priming affects the ability of individuals to show solidarity with others when it comes to money.
Authors ask themselves questions such as: are there significant gender differences in behavior? How does thinking about our gender identity affect the will to be solidary?
There are a series of gender stereotypes that almost everyone knows. For example, look after the community and care about it is often associated with the feminine, while agent behaviors are often identified as masculine.
In the context of a country like the Philippines, which is where the experiment takes place, women are traditionally perceived as housewives and responsibilities include prioritizing family and household over other tasks.
In general terms, girls suffer more restrictions and the idea that their place is in the home stills existing, while boys enjoy more freedom.
In addition, there are intergenerational transfer mechanisms in families that determine the opportunities that will be available to sons and daughters.
For example, in rural areas, parents tend to prefer that boys take over the work of the land, investing more economic resources for girls so they can study.
Gender systems are complex and varied. As everyone belongs to a certain social group, it implies that they also subscribe to a complete normative system. Their decisions are greatly influenced by this system, by values and by the culture of the place where people live.
The norms that dictate what is considered an appropriate behavior for men and women often depend on concepts related to family altruism. And it happens that when women deviate from this particular norm, they are considered to be not feminine enough.
Also, it should be noted that all gender variations depend on the context of the country we are talking about.
Therefore, it is important to always specify which one we are talking about, and what its history is.
For the research, authors carried out an experiment with a total of 96 people.
This consisted, firstly, of a questionnaire in which people were asked about the main differences perceived, in their opinion, between men and women.
In this way they were made more aware of these behavioral differences, facilitating priming.
Subsequently, a “game” was played in pairs. In it, both participants were asked about the following: imagining that both have the same amount of money and economic resources in general, how much would they give their partner if he/she loses in a dice game with 2/3 odds of winning?
Obtained results were interesting, although they did not surprise us.
A gender difference was observed in the amount donated to the partner, in the sense that women tended to give a greater amount.
This means that women tend to care more about others without expecting anything in return, when they are aware of their gender (that is, after priming).
That is, women seemed to think more about equity than about maximizing their own money, observing the opposite in men.
Regarding the exercise of priming, strength and maturity were cited as characteristics of the male gender, while responsibility, discipline, emotion, sensitivity, affection and patience were associated with women.
With these data we can affirm that, according to this study, it seems that when people reflect on gender and are more aware of their behavioral conditioning, they act accordingly, and the differences between them become more evident.
Authors comment that it is suggested that this “activation” promotes gender roles and stereotypes, so that decision-making by oneself should be motivated, trying to eliminate behavioral conditioning.
They point out that, in the future, they will intend to refine this study to obtain more conclusive results, in addition to studying to what extent the differences between genders have a biological or purely social component.
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