Reconsidering Whether Women are Less Selfish than Men: Group Gender Composition Matters in Dictator Games

Abstract

This paper investigates gender differences in donating behavior in double-anonymous dictator game experiments. To do so, we developed a new treatment where researchers can connect the gender of a dictator to her/his donation amount despite both female and male dictators being gathered in a room (the mixed-sex treatment). The gender priming effect is induced by comparing female dictators in the mixed-sex treatment with those in the single-sex treatment, where only female dictators are collected.

Our findings are that:

(1) Women donated more in the single-sex treatment than in the mixed-sex treatment, although the donation rates of men are not significantly different between the two treatments.

(2)Women donated more than men in the single-sex treatment, although the donation rates between men and women are not significantly different in the mixed-sex treatment.

These results indicate that women are less selfish than men when there are only women in a room.

Keywords: other-regarding behavior, dictator game experiments, double-blind procedure, gender difference, and gender priming effect

JEL Classification: C92, D63, D79