Brown Bag Seminar - Maria Recalde (UoM)

Title: Overriding in teams: The role of beliefs, social image, and gender

Abstract: Field studies have shown that women speak up less than men in professional environments where women are underrepresented. To shed light on the factors that may contribute to this gap, this paper studies willingness to speak up after someone has raised an opinion. We conduct a laboratory experiment to study why individuals override ideas in teams. Our design identifies the role of beliefs, social image, and gender through two treatments that vary whether participants interact anonymously. Results show that social image concerns matter and cause participants override less when their interactions are not anonymous. Beliefs also play a role. Analysis by gender reveals that the gender of the decision maker does not affect overriding rates. However, the gender of the partner does; when participants disagree with their partner, they are more likely to override a woman than a man. We provide suggestive evidence that preferences drive the differential treatment of women by men, while beliefs drive the behavior of women. Studying group performance, we find that overriding helps groups on average, while the gender composition of groups does not affect team performance.