Which is the More Predictable Gender? Public Good Contribution and Personality

Perugini, Marco; Tan, Jonathan H. W.; Zizzo, Daniel John

doi:10.2139/ssrn.676806

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Which is the More Predictable Gender? Public Good Contribution and Personality

34 Pages Posted: 18 Mar 2005

See all articles by Marco Perugini

Marco Perugini

University of Essex - Department of Psychology

Daniel John Zizzo

University of Queensland - School of Economics

Date Written: March 1, 2005

Abstract

Personality questionnaires have been used and can be used to predict behavior in economic settings. Using two sets of state-of-the-art measures from personality psychology (the Big Six) and social psychology (Social Value Orientation), we find that the behavior of men is predictable in the first half of a public good contribution experiment, whereas that of women is not. This result agrees with the reinterpretation of Carol Gilligan's (1982) view that women are more sensitive to the context in which decisions are made.

Keywords: gender, context, personality, public goods

JEL Classification: J16, C91, H41

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Perugini, Marco and Tan, Jonathan H. W. and Zizzo, Daniel John, Which is the More Predictable Gender? Public Good Contribution and Personality (March 1, 2005). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=676806 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.676806