A bit of self-promotion: in a recent paper, Jason Abrevaya and I examined whether female economists are less likely to say no when making recommendations on publishing papers, and whether they favor female authors.
I think many of the lab finding on "niceness" base this on game experiments and the tendency towards altruism or reciprocity in giving or trust. These experiments are usually done across a broad demographics of women who we can assume have different backgrounds, personalities, or other noncognitive traits.
When you narrow down the study to one group of female economists, we can then probably assume this group of women have certain traits in common. For example, they all have educational attainement far above average if they are economists (assuming they all have phds). I think Robert Franke has done studies showing studying economics can make students of the subject generally less cooperative and more self regarding .So there may be a tendency for women who choose to pursue higher education specifically in economics to share certain traits such as being "hawkish" and maybe less giving.
Also, as you stated, Economic women may also be well aware of being identitfied as "nicer" or more giving, and therefore seek to adjust their initial judgement to appear more objective, fair, stern, or whathaveyou. As you said, the social context is also important to consider.
Or maybe female economists actually are being nicer in a backhanded way, by saving their fellow economistas from referring a low quality papers that may potentially be scrutinized.
Please don't take this as an attack, but whenever I read the abstract of a paper like this, I'm always struck by how simple the hypotheses are. Women nicer in general to other women? I'm hardly qualified to comment on the details of the analysis, but just based on the intuition I've gained from spending time with women, I'd imagine that we can assemble a better model than that.
I'd try to put together a toy model of male+male slash female+female interaction that describes the natural hypothesis about differences in socialization: maybe a sort of iterated prisoner's dilemma, where there's an index of how warmly-disposed the prisoners are to one another, which starts higher, and goes down faster and further, when women don't cooperate than when men don't cooperate. (This probably won't work, but hopefully it illustrates what I'm going for.)
Of course this sounds hard to make rigorous and test, so maybe that's why it isn't popular. Or maybe it's that I'm much younger than the author, thus came of age in an intellectual climate fertilized by the work of the author, among others, which gives me a different sort of intuition, which then explains why I find this approach a bit strange. Search me.
Point is I find papers like this strange, and I suspect that it's half because Hamermesh & co. did their jobs too well when I was small.
There's a reason that television has several "Housewives" shows...and no "Husband" shows.
Very simply, women bring the drama. Men just say, "Hey, dude, relax and have a beer," and all is well. Women will plot, scheme, and hate for years.
I know what I sound like, believe me. Except many people will recognize that what I say is true. Otherwise, why would women, just as intelligent and far more beautiful than men--and who also live longer than men!--not rule the world by now?
The reason is that women have trouble forging the alliances and friendships between themselves that men can forge between themselves. It may be petty rivalries, jealousies, etc., but it has sabotaged the advancement of women into the highest places.
Yes, there are men who share many of these same characteristics. And there are plenty of women who do not fit this (admitted) stereotype. Yet the overarching truth remains: Man stand together better than women...and both men and women get along better with men.
Are women nicer to each other? Only if there is no perceived threat to their many and varied and sometimes unworthy interests. Kind of like the wife who vetoes her husbands choice of secretaries because the new girl is "a floozy."
Wait! When you think about it, maybe women DO rule the world...they just use very subtle means to make us think that they aren't controlling us--GASP!
I think this is pretty true. Even out of the economics world, women are generally nicer to each other than to other males. This, if under economic standards, means that the marginal cost of being nicer to girls is less or equal than the marginal revenue. This is, in my opinon, due to the more negative returns that boys give. This is because girls fall in love with boys and they will grow expectations for them. Whenever the male doesent comply with "their end of the deal", that gives diminishing or even negative returns to the women. Therefore they wont "pay" or increase their cost as much (be nice) to guys because of their great excess of dimishing returns. Contrary to women.
The problem with these studies, or at least the reporting thereof, is that they describe people as a group.
There are women out there who are much "nicer" than the average man, some who are much less "nice" than the average man, and a lot who are more or less in the middle. Chances are everyone has run into a couple of each. So whether the study had found women in general to be nicer, less nice, or about the same, everyone knows a gal who fits the conclusion and one who contradicts it.
What about the opposite? Do male economists discriminate in favor of males? Are they "nicer"?
ResponderEliminarThe real question is, are the male economists friendier to other mail economists than other female economists? Most likely.
ResponderEliminarI think many of the lab finding on "niceness" base this on game experiments and the tendency towards altruism or reciprocity in giving or trust. These experiments are usually done across a broad demographics of women who we can assume have different backgrounds, personalities, or other noncognitive traits.
ResponderEliminarWhen you narrow down the study to one group of female economists, we can then probably assume this group of women have certain traits in common. For example, they all have educational attainement far above average if they are economists (assuming they all have phds). I think Robert Franke has done studies showing studying economics can make students of the subject generally less cooperative and more self regarding .So there may be a tendency for women who choose to pursue higher education specifically in economics to share certain traits such as being "hawkish" and maybe less giving.
Also, as you stated, Economic women may also be well aware of being identitfied as "nicer" or more giving, and therefore seek to adjust their initial judgement to appear more objective, fair, stern, or whathaveyou. As you said, the social context is also important to consider.
Or maybe female economists actually are being nicer in a backhanded way, by saving their fellow economistas from referring a low quality papers that may potentially be scrutinized.
Please don't take this as an attack, but whenever I read the abstract of a paper like this, I'm always struck by how simple the hypotheses are. Women nicer in general to other women? I'm hardly qualified to comment on the details of the analysis, but just based on the intuition I've gained from spending time with women, I'd imagine that we can assemble a better model than that.
ResponderEliminarI'd try to put together a toy model of male+male slash female+female interaction that describes the natural hypothesis about differences in socialization: maybe a sort of iterated prisoner's dilemma, where there's an index of how warmly-disposed the prisoners are to one another, which starts higher, and goes down faster and further, when women don't cooperate than when men don't cooperate. (This probably won't work, but hopefully it illustrates what I'm going for.)
Of course this sounds hard to make rigorous and test, so maybe that's why it isn't popular. Or maybe it's that I'm much younger than the author, thus came of age in an intellectual climate fertilized by the work of the author, among others, which gives me a different sort of intuition, which then explains why I find this approach a bit strange. Search me.
Point is I find papers like this strange, and I suspect that it's half because Hamermesh & co. did their jobs too well when I was small.
In my experience women are different from men -- and vive la difference -- but rarely in ways that can be reliably quantified.
ResponderEliminarThere's a reason that television has several "Housewives" shows...and no "Husband" shows.
ResponderEliminarVery simply, women bring the drama. Men just say, "Hey, dude, relax and have a beer," and all is well. Women will plot, scheme, and hate for years.
I know what I sound like, believe me. Except many people will recognize that what I say is true. Otherwise, why would women, just as intelligent and far more beautiful than men--and who also live longer than men!--not rule the world by now?
The reason is that women have trouble forging the alliances and friendships between themselves that men can forge between themselves. It may be petty rivalries, jealousies, etc., but it has sabotaged the advancement of women into the highest places.
Yes, there are men who share many of these same characteristics. And there are plenty of women who do not fit this (admitted) stereotype. Yet the overarching truth remains: Man stand together better than women...and both men and women get along better with men.
Are women nicer to each other? Only if there is no perceived threat to their many and varied and sometimes unworthy interests. Kind of like the wife who vetoes her husbands choice of secretaries because the new girl is "a floozy."
Wait! When you think about it, maybe women DO rule the world...they just use very subtle means to make us think that they aren't controlling us--GASP!
I think this is pretty true. Even out of the economics world, women are generally nicer to each other than to other males. This, if under economic standards, means that the marginal cost of being nicer to girls is less or equal than the marginal revenue. This is, in my opinon, due to the more negative returns that boys give. This is because girls fall in love with boys and they will grow expectations for them. Whenever the male doesent comply with "their end of the deal", that gives diminishing or even negative returns to the women. Therefore they wont "pay" or increase their cost as much (be nice) to guys because of their great excess of dimishing returns. Contrary to women.
ResponderEliminarThe problem with these studies, or at least the reporting thereof, is that they describe people as a group.
ResponderEliminarThere are women out there who are much "nicer" than the average man, some who are much less "nice" than the average man, and a lot who are more or less in the middle. Chances are everyone has run into a couple of each. So whether the study had found women in general to be nicer, less nice, or about the same, everyone knows a gal who fits the conclusion and one who contradicts it.
AdamS-
ResponderEliminarVery simply, women bring the drama. Men just say,
Like nearly every generalization, this question is incredibly shallow but apparently useful.
ResponderEliminarDid anyone under 40 really doubt that female economists are just as rigorous as male ones?