>We use lab experiments and field data from the Dutch Math Olympiad to show that women are more likely than men to stop competing if they lose. In a math competition in the lab, women are much less likely than men to choose competition again after losing in the first round. In the Math Olympiad, girls, but not boys, who fail to make the second round are less likely to compete again one year later. This gender difference in the reaction to competition outcomes may help to explain why fewer women make it to the top in business and academia.
The whole mentality of presuming those that do not win will try try again and learn from the experience often ignores that for some, it is logical to learn from the experience and move on in another direction all together.
Hence a further deeper study would be inciteful. Did those who did not try again, try something else and shift focus and how well did they do in that new focus. That would be the biggest question.
Follow this strategy too many times and you're out of new foci. It's particularly concerning if you're more fragile against the early challenges associated with a new endeavor. Many things won't look fruitful until you stick with them long enough to see over the first hill.
It is believable that there are sex and age based differences in the distribution of risk taking as a result of both culture and biology. Bias for or against an individual based on these tendencies is wrong when used to pre-judge that person.
What about the outcome bias for people or groups with differing risk tendencies?
Is it morally necessary to compensate for different risk strategies? Which ones and to what degree? Which sources of cause should get this privilege and which shouldn't?
There is a vocal group that insists that any disparity in outcome needs to be corrected, at least for their preferred groups.
There is another that insists that it is immoral to punish (in any way) the hard work and other characteristics that lead to success outcomes.
You...really seem to be reading into my post. Moral necessity for rewarding different risk strategies?
No, I'm not making any overarching claims to be taken up and enforced by a government or similar entity. And diversity of most sorts has value in a population.
Actually, my biggest take away from all this is that it is even more important to stop framing things as zero-sum competitions and more as collaborations where an individual can find a space fitting of their grit, skills and interests.
Some will point to this as evidence that the unequal outcomes in our society are not a result of sexism, but biological differences between sexes. Others will say society has taught women to give up more easily on their aspirations. Who knows what the truth is? Is it really worth chasing when the end goal is trying to label individuals based on a set of predetermined qualities?
Economically, a good chunk of unequal outcomes are a necessary evil in order to incentivize the behavior necessary for an efficient economy. If being a high-ranking corporate officer didn't pay better than lower-ranking ones, nowhere near as much work would be put into competing to climb the corporate ladder.
You can read more about it by getting into Tournament Theory, but the basic gist is this: "winners" get paid more than their output is worth, "losers" less, but the average participant's compensation tends to be proportional to the average value of work. It's useful when the difficulty of measuring output is so burdensome to make piece-work uneconomical.
There's other categories where the pay incentives are necessary. Taking on physically dangerous, unpleasant, or taxing work (eg, oilfield workers), or doing jobs that require a large investment in skill development (doctors, software developers). If you don't have the pay differential, a lot of important jobs just won't get done.
>Is it really worth chasing when the end goal is trying to label individuals based on a set of predetermined qualities?
It absolutely makes a big difference when it comes to public policy. If the unequal outcomes are because one sub-group is more willing to take the risks we want to avoid or develop the skills we don't have time to learn, it's extremely counterproductive to try to fix those outcomes. The inequality is the price we pay to get people to do things they'd rather not. Backtracking on these incentive gradients is short-sighted at best.
"If being a high-ranking corporate officer didn't pay better than lower-ranking ones, nowhere near as much work would be put into competing to climb the corporate ladder."
I disagree a lot of people seek a higher ranking job because of power. Once they have the power they give themselves more.
Would you rather clean bathrooms or tell others when to clean them for the same pay?
> I disagree a lot of people seek a higher ranking job because of power.
Maybe, but those are not the sorts of people you want in high-ranking jobs, as a general rule. So it still makes sense to explicitly reward competence as an alternative.
Also, there is the theory that in some cases the averages are the same but the standard deviations are not. Even if true, this would result in phenomena that is hard to explain to much of the population.
It is when many people point to over-representation of men in a field as proof of discrimination and something that should be corrected by the government.
I think this is a positive thing. People who don't give up usually end up where they aren't supposed to, with peers who are simply better. Not to say they are totally useless, but they wouldn't have made the cut without their drive, which just means they pushed themselves above their limits to achieve something they shouldn't have. Now they are occupying space more deserving people could have been.
Is that the wise thing to do? Looking at you guys.
I think there are very few subjects where natural talent will be more productive than drive and work ethic.
Not sure how you could test or prove something like this though.
It would depend on how you define natural talent. A certain level of natural talent is absolutely necessary, but that level of natural talent is found in the majority of people. If you don't consider that natural talent and only consider some specific level above the baseline as qualifying, then the impact of natural talent verses hard work is much lower.
it is, the drive to make it to finals and win is valuable, the drive to fail and try again, is it wise is what I am asking for the given reasons above.
You said "Now they are occupying space more deserving people could have been." If drive is itself deserving, what makes those other people "more deserving"?
Your reasoning assumes that there is a binary fitness function (either you are fit for the role or you aren’t), which remains constant over time, which can be overridden through not giving up.
Now they [those who kept competing] are occupying space more deserving people could have been.
Um, how are people who give up earlier more deserving?
My read (could be wrong) of what you wrote is that you may value potential/innate talent more than achievement/work. Which you are, of course, free to do. Personally, I value achievement/work over potential/innate talent.
I read a study a while ago (didn't pinboard it, sorry) by an engineering professional society on why women who do engineering degrees don't go on to work as engineers. For some, it was obstacles: sexist colleagues, unsuitable workplaces, etc. But for the majority, it was because they didn't want to be an engineer: they used their degree in engineering as a springboard into things like starting their own companies or being investment bankers.
Which rather implies that men who get degrees in engineering tend to carry on into working in engineering because they lack the imagination to do something else.
I would have to very much disagree. There are parts I do not enjoy but those are more office related regardless if the work is STEM or not. I do like the money, but I do STEM stuff for fun and many my side projects eat money, not produce it.
Are you serious? I have long ago accepted that some people just like different things from me, but I still don't really understand how you couldn't love STEM work.
There are other fields which are also fun (obviously), but STEM has all the really cool puzzles and weird edge cases that a certain type of personality really likes.
In my experience, men are more likely than women to choose degrees based on prestige and salary expectations. I'd say it's less about imagination after the fact and more about initial motivation.
This is common sense to anybody who had lived past his puberty, yet you cannot say it in this crazy neoliberal world. You really need a study for this?
This seems to be consistent with the principle that nature experiments with males but plays conservatively with females. I don't think it's an accident that both the smartest AND the dumbest people in any population will be males. Females play too important of a role for the specie, while males are very expendable so they can afford to try more dangerous things more often. If a male is removed from the genetic pool it's easy to make up for him, while losing a female reproductively is a tragedy.
It's not about what's best for a species. It's about which individual breeds how much before death.
And looking at it from that point of view makes it even more straightforward. Especially if you consider that historically approximately 80% of males died without having offspring.
There are firsthand accounts from women who did compete successfully on why it's harder for them (for example first answer is from a female IOI silver medalist):
Recently on a podcast I heard the assertion (so I don't know of a study) that female students may be observed to do better on average in math classes than males, but males were disproportionately much more confident about their abilities than females.
I have observed this difference myself anecdotally, it is sometimes almost comical in young males to have completely unearned confidence in math and technical skills. I have always thought this is tied to normal effects of testosterone.
I must have some very womanly traits then. When I first joined my engineering school, I felt so bad/inadequate because all the guys were like "yeah this is easy, I totally got this" and I was like "really? it's not that easy imo!" (for me, easy means I understand 100% of the topic)
First few exams and I had WAY better marks than all of them, lol.
More specifically, it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Impostor syndrome is a broader description that heavily overlaps with the "give up competing due to perceived losses" that the article talks about.
(As a side effect of this, one could predict that approaches to mitigation of impostor syndrome (which there are a few of) will be especially helpful if you're concerned about improving women's representation. Somewhat ironically though, the "ideological echo chamber" that is most active in pursuing these goals is not always very open to such notions!)
Saying a class is easy is not the Dunning-Kruger effect, especially when the class is easy for the individual. Thinking mastering the entire field is easy because the intro class was easy is a far better match of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Someone who is well aware of how complex a subject is can find a given class to be easy, which would imply they are not under the Dunning-Kruger effect. Confidence alone is not sufficient.
Edit: that they ended up with lower marks due to not studying due to overconfidence due to the earlier ease of the topic seems like it would fall under Dunning-Kruger.
No, you have it backwards. Dunning-Kruger describes incompetent people thinking their work is high quality, or overestimating their level of competence. Impostor syndrome is when people feel inadequate despite producing acceptable work.
I like to casually read articles on that topic. From my perspective and general knowledge, I would say that society shapes people and not just biological differences. Sex-based social structures are very complicated.
This comes to mind:
"Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas.
Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures.
Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures."
Touchy issue, but I've been reading more and more where women in competitive sports are thinking of dropping out if they are forced to compete against men who say they're "women". Quite a few recent sporting events where actual women were trounced by men competing as women.
Please don't refer to transwomen as "women". Gender and sex really is more complicated than just men and women, and yes, I do mean "biologically", not just as some mental abstraction.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
If our end goal is a body of mathematicians that closely reflects society at large, it's pretty important to understand what factors influence participation in mathematics in under-represented groups, no?
I think our goal should not be a body of mathematicians (or coders or nurses or NBA players) that closely reflects society at large, but an entry process that is fair. And the first and foremost tenet of fairness must be that each human be treated as an individual, not as the member of some group.
I took your post quite literally--if you believe in equality of outcome, studies like this are important. Personally, I disagree with you in principle, as I think there often aspects of human capital that can only be seen on the level of organization and not the individual. What it means to reflect society in a meaningful way differs depending on the role, but as a practice it has the potential to reduce oversight by leveraging a variety of perspectives.
My advice to you is to avoid bureaucratic/academic language that is nearly devoid of meaning. For example, "there [are] often aspects of human capital that can only be seen on the level of organization and not the individual" and "it has the potential to reduce oversight by leveraging a variety of perspectives."
For examples to illustrate: a group of QA testers that consists entirely of pale-skinned people is going to be collectively less qualified at testing a face recognition tool than a group with a range of skin tones. A school board consisting entirely of people from a particular geographic area is less able to fully account for local concerns and logistics than one with members from a broad area. Diversity for diversity's sake can be a real advantage when you think carefully about what diversity looks like for your project. If you don't see the potential, that's fine, I have no interest in persuading you. My advice to you is that sometimes when you don't understand something, it's not because it was poorly written. But sorry for the typo ;)
Well, testosterone is the hormone of competition. Males have much more of it.
So everything's a competition, for many males.
How did society educate men to compete on everything ? Why would it ?
And on the other hand, women have low levels of testosterone.
But we know one area where they tend to strongly compete: competing on a mate.
And it's interesting: Just a whiff of a woman close to ovulation is enough to stimulate another woman's testosterone levels, along with her desire to compete.[1]
I think it's interesting to look at how you define competition. It actually derives from the Latin 'competere' or 'strive together.' I think you can see this with the "Shalane Effect" aka how the famous Olympic marathoner Shalane Flanagan is elevating her competition, and thus her own performance, by supporting those around her. In the truest sense we can only really compete against ourselves.
Isn't this a bit of a chicken and the egg situation? Are women more likely to give up due to some evolutionary or natural trait, or is it learned due to some societal pressure?
82 comments
[ 58.3 ms ] story [ 1998 ms ] thread>We use lab experiments and field data from the Dutch Math Olympiad to show that women are more likely than men to stop competing if they lose. In a math competition in the lab, women are much less likely than men to choose competition again after losing in the first round. In the Math Olympiad, girls, but not boys, who fail to make the second round are less likely to compete again one year later. This gender difference in the reaction to competition outcomes may help to explain why fewer women make it to the top in business and academia.
Hence a further deeper study would be inciteful. Did those who did not try again, try something else and shift focus and how well did they do in that new focus. That would be the biggest question.
It is believable that there are sex and age based differences in the distribution of risk taking as a result of both culture and biology. Bias for or against an individual based on these tendencies is wrong when used to pre-judge that person.
What about the outcome bias for people or groups with differing risk tendencies?
Is it morally necessary to compensate for different risk strategies? Which ones and to what degree? Which sources of cause should get this privilege and which shouldn't?
There is a vocal group that insists that any disparity in outcome needs to be corrected, at least for their preferred groups.
There is another that insists that it is immoral to punish (in any way) the hard work and other characteristics that lead to success outcomes.
No, I'm not making any overarching claims to be taken up and enforced by a government or similar entity. And diversity of most sorts has value in a population.
Actually, my biggest take away from all this is that it is even more important to stop framing things as zero-sum competitions and more as collaborations where an individual can find a space fitting of their grit, skills and interests.
http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...
I'm not familiar with the programming language nor the file format.
In addition, a 2016 draft of the paper appears to be available here (found by searching for the paper's title): https://site.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj8706/f/buser-y...
Ungated PDF is here:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Do-Women-Give-Up-Compe...
You can read more about it by getting into Tournament Theory, but the basic gist is this: "winners" get paid more than their output is worth, "losers" less, but the average participant's compensation tends to be proportional to the average value of work. It's useful when the difficulty of measuring output is so burdensome to make piece-work uneconomical.
There's other categories where the pay incentives are necessary. Taking on physically dangerous, unpleasant, or taxing work (eg, oilfield workers), or doing jobs that require a large investment in skill development (doctors, software developers). If you don't have the pay differential, a lot of important jobs just won't get done.
>Is it really worth chasing when the end goal is trying to label individuals based on a set of predetermined qualities?
It absolutely makes a big difference when it comes to public policy. If the unequal outcomes are because one sub-group is more willing to take the risks we want to avoid or develop the skills we don't have time to learn, it's extremely counterproductive to try to fix those outcomes. The inequality is the price we pay to get people to do things they'd rather not. Backtracking on these incentive gradients is short-sighted at best.
I disagree a lot of people seek a higher ranking job because of power. Once they have the power they give themselves more.
Would you rather clean bathrooms or tell others when to clean them for the same pay?
Maybe, but those are not the sorts of people you want in high-ranking jobs, as a general rule. So it still makes sense to explicitly reward competence as an alternative.
Is that the wise thing to do? Looking at you guys.
Is your claim simply that we overweight it?
So, learning and practice? Or how do you distinguish between what someone should and shouldn't be able to achieve?
That all seems very flawed and reductionist.
Who decides where someone is "supposed to" end up?
Um, how are people who give up earlier more deserving?
My read (could be wrong) of what you wrote is that you may value potential/innate talent more than achievement/work. Which you are, of course, free to do. Personally, I value achievement/work over potential/innate talent.
Which rather implies that men who get degrees in engineering tend to carry on into working in engineering because they lack the imagination to do something else.
What about the option that they really want to do engineering.
Also I get a ton of joy from STEM-based personal projects that wouldn't be possible if I didn't level up my skills through work and play
There are other fields which are also fun (obviously), but STEM has all the really cool puzzles and weird edge cases that a certain type of personality really likes.
It's not about what's best for a species. It's about which individual breeds how much before death.
And looking at it from that point of view makes it even more straightforward. Especially if you consider that historically approximately 80% of males died without having offspring.
If a gene in a male has a higher standard deviation than in a female, this can all be explained at the gene level.
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-more-women-participate-in-pro...
T. Buser, H. Yuan, ``Do women give up Competing more easily? Evidence from the Lab and the Dutch Math Olympiad,'' 2016-11-10. https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/7151108/Buser_and_Yuan_2016.pdf
I have observed this difference myself anecdotally, it is sometimes almost comical in young males to have completely unearned confidence in math and technical skills. I have always thought this is tied to normal effects of testosterone.
First few exams and I had WAY better marks than all of them, lol.
(As a side effect of this, one could predict that approaches to mitigation of impostor syndrome (which there are a few of) will be especially helpful if you're concerned about improving women's representation. Somewhat ironically though, the "ideological echo chamber" that is most active in pursuing these goals is not always very open to such notions!)
Someone who is well aware of how complex a subject is can find a given class to be easy, which would imply they are not under the Dunning-Kruger effect. Confidence alone is not sufficient.
Edit: that they ended up with lower marks due to not studying due to overconfidence due to the earlier ease of the topic seems like it would fall under Dunning-Kruger.
This comes to mind:
"Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas.
Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures.
Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11519935
How is it contrary? I don’t know a single evolutionary theorist who denies impact of culture on behavior.
But the scientific evidence shows innate differences between genders.
There are studies out there showing gender differences between human babies (boys and girls) and even between baby chimps.
I would consider saying that gender differences are solely or even mostly society based as science denial.
I merely wrote that differences between men and women are not only biological but also based on social structures.
You start by saying that you agree with this and then you make our own statements.
I am incredulous about how linking a study from a scientific journal is evidence of science denial.
But my point on science denial was that saying that it is all or mostly society based still stands.
It is a good thing that nobody here said that then.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
My advice to you is to avoid bureaucratic/academic language that is nearly devoid of meaning. For example, "there [are] often aspects of human capital that can only be seen on the level of organization and not the individual" and "it has the potential to reduce oversight by leveraging a variety of perspectives."
So everything's a competition, for many males.
How did society educate men to compete on everything ? Why would it ?
And on the other hand, women have low levels of testosterone.
But we know one area where they tend to strongly compete: competing on a mate.
And it's interesting: Just a whiff of a woman close to ovulation is enough to stimulate another woman's testosterone levels, along with her desire to compete.[1]
[1]https://www.livescience.com/39902-women-smell-competition.ht...