Concepts and Calculations : Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess

We study gender differences in willingness to guess. We present the results of a field experiment where participants were asked to answer true/false questions. We vary whether questions on the same subject are presented as calculations or understanding of concepts and whether a penalty is imposed for incorrect answers. We find that, when giving an incorrect answer is not penalized, there are no gender differences in willingness to guess. However, when there is a penalty for incorrect answers, females are significantly more likely to skip questions if they involve calculations while they answer significantly more questions than males when they are asked to figure out the truthfulness of a concept. The gap in willingness to guess never affects performance. Results are driven by participants endowed with a lower level of ability. When digging deeper to understand possible mechanisms at work, consistently with the literature, we find that differences in risk propensity help to explain the gender gap in numerical questions. Also, overconfidence contributes to explaining females’ higher willingness to guess than males in conceptual questions. We suggest that a possible explanation of our evidence lies in the role of stereotypes