Exploring the Impact of Financial Incentives on Stereotype Threat: Evidence from a Pilot Study

Abstract

Motivated in part by large and persistent gender gaps in labor market outcomes (e.g., Claudia Goldin 1994; Joseph G. Altonji and Rebecca M. Blank 1998), a large body of experimental research has been devoted to understanding gender differences in behavior and responses to stimuli. An influential finding in experimental psychology is the presence of stereotype threat: making gender salient induces large gender gaps in performance on math tests (Steven J. Spencer, Claude M. Steele, and Diane M. Quinn 1999). For instance, when Spencer et al. (1999) informed subjects that women tended to underperform men on the math test they were about to take, women’s test scores dropped by 50 percent or more compared to a similar math test in which subjects were not informed of previous gender differences. In this latter treatment, men and women perform similarly. Stereotype threat research typically is carried out in the absence of financial rewards for performance. In this paper, we report the results of a pilot experimental study examining gender differences