Gender Differences in the Attribution of Failure and Success in Private and Strategic Settings

Abstract
During our educational and professional lives, we face failures and successes that we need to justify to ourselves and others. In most cases, failure and success are the results of an unknown combination of both internal factors (i.e., own ability and exerted effort) and external factors that are outside one’s control (i.e., others or luck). The evidence suggests that when people attribute the causes of failure and success, they often exhibit a "self-attribution bias" -attribute success to their merit and failure to external sources- to maintain self-esteem. In this project, we study an additional reason for the self-attribution bias, a strategic one. We use an online experiment to test how individuals attribute noisy feedback when the source of the outcome can be due to their ability or someone else’s ability. In addition, following recent evidence on gender differences in attribution biases, we also test whether men and women use different failure and success justifications and study the consequences of it in a hiring context. Understanding the nature and economic consequences of gender differences in attribution of failures/successes is crucial, as it could be one of the causes of the observed gender gaps in the labor market such as the under-representation of women in top-level positions.

Speaker bio
Lina Lozano is a postdoctoral associate at the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (C-BID), at New York University Abu Dhabi. She obtained a PhD Cum Laude in Economics at Department of Economics of Maastricht University in September 2021.  

Lozano's research primarily explores the intersections of Experimental and Behavioral Economics with a focus on gender dynamics. She investigates topics such as attribution biases, stereotypes, sexual consent, the impact of risk attitudes and beliefs on individuals’ competitive behaviors, and bargaining behavior. Her interests extend to gender economics, applied microeconomics and social identity, where she seeks to understand the underlying patterns that influence economic decisions and workplace dynamics.

About the SBEE seminar series

The Social, Behavioral and Experimental Economics seminar series brings together a community of economics scholars from three units at the University of Michigan — the School of Information, the Department of Economics and the Ross Business School — whose research aims to broaden the understanding of the social, economic and political consequences of real-life decisions and behaviors.

Top researchers from around the globe come to Michigan to present their work at the SBEE seminar series, exploring the intersection of economics, psychology, computer science and information science.

The seminar series is organized by U-M faculty members Yan Chen (UMSI), Alain Cohn (UMSI), Erin Krupka (UMSI), Stephen Leider (Ross), Christine Exley (Econ), A. Yesim Orhun (Ross), Tanya Rosenblat (UMSI), and Basit Zafar (Econ). Todd Stuart serves as seminar coordinator.