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Left Handed Women are More Competitive than Right Handed Men: On the Biological Basis of Gender Differences in Competitiveness
| Citations: | 3 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@MISC{Hoffman_lefthanded,
author = {Moshe Hoffman and Uri Gneezy},
title = {Left Handed Women are More Competitive than Right Handed Men: On the Biological Basis of Gender Differences in Competitiveness},
year = {}
}
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Abstract
1 Men earn more than women, and women do not rise as high in the work place hierarchy as men. Competitiveness may provide a partial explanation for this sex gap in the labor market (Gneezy, Niederle and Rustichini, 2003; Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007; Croson and Gneezy, 2008). Similarly, left handed workers earn more than righties (Ruebeck, 2007). In this paper we show that handedness and competitiveness are correlated, and suggest that this difference is partially responsible for the gender gap in earnings. This is important because it shows that nature has an important role in the gender differences in competitiveness. Previous work showed that nurture or socialization play a role in determining the competitiveness of men and women (Gneezy, Leonard, and List, 2009; Dreber et al, 2010; Sutter et al, 2010), rejecting the “only nature determines competitiveness ” straw man. In order to show that nurture is also important, one needs to find an instrument that does not depend on nurture, but is affecting competitiveness. While a strong evolutionary theory predicts that biology will
