Papers, finals, job search, the holidays – the pressure of it all!
I was hoping to learn in this seminar that being a woman would somehow
improve my performance. What I did learn was not quite so straightforward, but
still fascinating. Some experimental studies in recent years had found that in a mixed-sex environment, the pressure of competition improved men’s performance, but not women’s, and that women often opted out of
competitive environments. Olga Shruchkov, Assistant Professor of Economics at
Wellesley College, noticed something about those experiments. The “tasks” which
subjects performed under competitive pressure were invariably math-oriented,
like addition problems and mazes, and there was no range of performance quality,
only right or wrong answers.
Shruchkov designed an experiment that would fill these gaps – a Boggle-like
verbal task, a comparable math task and a difference between competitive
pressure and time pressure. This experimental design was not only creative, but
also rigorous, with relevant controls, task-consistency mechanisms and a whole
range of variables to measure. The experiments replicated previous findings
that under time pressure on math tasks men attained higher scores and had a
higher propensity to select into tournaments.
The
innovative experimental design also yielded important new insights. On verbal
tasks under time pressure, women performed as well as men and had a similar
propensity to enter competitions. In a verbal competition under time pressure,
women did slightly better than men. Things really took off once the time
pressure was lowered – women outperformed men on the verbal tasks under
competition. On the math task with low time pressure, women and men performed
similarly both with and without competition. Interestingly, giving more time
for the math task doubled the number of women who elected to compete. So it’s
not the pressure of the competition or inherent math abilities that were
hurting the performance of women in earlier experiments – it was time!
Why did time help women so much more than the men? Making the
competition about total points, not speed, allowed for a measurement of the
quality dimension. A look at the kinds of words women were finding when given
the time reveals an emphasis on quality – they made longer words and made fewer
mistakes. The men, on the other hand, went for quantity of words and in the
process lost points for misspellings and typos. Perhaps more women participated
in the math tournament when they had more time, because it allowed them to
check their calculations more thoroughly.
Professor Shruchkov was careful with drawing policy implications
out of experimental results, but she suggested that take-home exams in math and
science might help more girls excel in those subjects early on, which could get
more of them interested in pursuing those careers. Personally, I am tempted to
use the results to ask for a final paper extension right now! I wonder what Shruchkov
tells her students when they try to do that.
Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.
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