Boasting Your Way Up

The tendency to exaggerate past performance is true across gender, but men exaggerate more

A study published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization suggests that overconfidence may be one reason for the prevalence of men in most leadership roles. An experimental study has allowed researchers to segregate overconfidence from other factors. According to a Columbia Business School press release, MBA students were asked ‘to complete a set of math problems; both men and women performed about the same. One year later, the researchers brought back the same students, asking them to recall their previous years’ performance. The researchers found that when they compared actual with recalled performance, most participants overestimated their performance… The major difference was that men consistently rated their past performance about 30 per cent higher than it really was. Women, on the other hand, consistently rated their past performance only about 15 per cent higher…’

‘Next, the researchers asked participants to estimate their performance on a task if chosen to represent a group… Each group had to choose a representative and would compete with the other groups, with a cash prize awarded to the highest-scoring team… for some groups, the representatives got an additional payment of either $20 or $75. In groups where leaders get no additional cash prize, individual and group incentives were aligned: that is, if a group knew a woman was better, its best interest was to pick her or sacrifice its competitive edge and the financial reward. In the groups whose leaders received a payment simply for being chosen to lead, an individual could then be chosen as a rep if they lied about their performance, and the group would lose while the leader would gain. The results revealed that, on average, both men and women were willing to lie about their performance. When participants had an incentive to lie, they lied more, and the incidence of lying increased as the monetary award for being chosen as leader increased. While women kept pace with men on how frequently they lied, women did not exaggerate their performance to the same degree. As a result, women were selected 1/3 less often than their abilities would otherwise indicate.’

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