Abstract
Gender differences in dishonesty and mistrust have been reported across cultures and linked to stereotypes about females being more trustworthy and trusting. Here we focus on fundamental issues of trust-based communication that may be affected by gender: the decisions whether to honestly deliver private information and whether to trust that this delivered information is honest. Using laboratory experiments that model trust-based strategic communication and response, we examined the relationship between gender, gender stereotypes, and gender discriminative lies and challenges. Drawing from a student sample, we presented males and females (N = 80) with incentivized stereotype elicitation tasks that reveal their expectations of lies and challenges from each gender, followed by a series of strategic communication interactions within and between genders. Before interacting, both genders stereotyped females as more trustworthy (expected to send more honest messages) and more trusting (expected to accept and not challenge others’ messages) than males, in accord with cross-cultural gender differences. In best response to these stereotypes, both genders discriminately accepted or challenged messages based on the sender’s gender. However, we find no differences between males’ and females’ overall rates of lies and challenges. After learning the results of their strategic interactions, males and females revised their stereotypes about lies and challenges expected of each gender; these stereotype revisions resulted in greater predictive accuracy and less disparate gender discrimination. This suggests an important facultative feature of human trust-based communication and gender stereotyping: while the delivery and trust of private information is informed by gender stereotypes, these stereotypes are recalibrated with experience.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
The data generated by and analyzed by this study are available at Mendeley Data and will be made available upon request.
Notes
Game theory predicts a mixed-strategy equilibrium in which each party chooses (i.e., tell truth versus lie, trust versus challenge) with probabilities that cause the other to be indifferent to their own choice. With our parameters the equilibrium prediction is that the sender lies a third of the time (saying “2-to-split”) when the state is that they actually have the larger amount to split, and the receiver challenges a third of the time when the unclear message is “2-to-split.” The proof of this game theoretic equilibrium is presented in the ESM (§2).
The experiment software required two groups of 20 participants per session. Using the stereotypes from Schniter and Shields 2014 as reference, we estimated a mean difference in stereotypes of 15%, and the standard deviation of 20%. More than 20 participants per group, but fewer than 40, are needed to find a difference at the 1% significance level.
There are plausible reasons to expect that the stereotypes revealed after feedback remain distinct from that feedback. First, expectations based on prior stereotypes before feedback might be conserved because they were likely informed by a large set of extra-laboratory interactions and could retain predictive validity when applied to a new set of individuals in the laboratory. Second, after feedback, participants are guessing about strategic behavior of a “moving target” which has also been given feedback and may adjust subsequent strategies accordingly. Last, although participants were given an opportunity to review feedback after Phase 1, this feedback was not visually available during Phase 2 when posterior stereotypes were elicited and behaviors chosen for interactions. As such, there is ample room for human error: even if individuals attempted to make posterior stereotypes exactly based on the feedback viewed, they would have had to rely on long-term memory.
In order to measure a revision of lie behavior, a participant had to see at least one flip outcome of “4” in each phase. This excludes five participants when interacting as senders with male receivers, and three participants when interacting as senders with female receivers.
References
Amodio, D. M. (2014). The neuroscience of prejudice and stereotyping. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(10), 670–682.
Andreoni, J., & Petrie, R. (2008). Beauty, gender and stereotypes: Evidence from laboratory experiments. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29(1), 73–93.
Arrow, K. J. (1973). The theory of discrimination. In O. Ashenfelter & A. Rees (Eds.), Discrimination in labor markets (pp. 3–33). Princeton University Press.
Ashraf, N. (2009). Spousal control and intra-household decision making: An experimental study in the Philippines. American Economic Review, 99(4), 1245–1277.
Barkow, J, H., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1995). The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford University Press.
Battigalli, P., Charness, G., & Dufwenberg, M. (2013). Deception: The role of guilt. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 93, 227–232.
Becker, G. S. (1957). The economics of discrimination. University of Chicago Press.
Becker, G. S. (1968). Crime and punishment: An economic approach. In N. G. Fielding, A. Clarke, & R. Witt (Eds.), The economic dimensions of crime (pp. 13–68). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bicchieri, C. (2016). Norms in the wild: How to diagnose, measure, and change social norms. Oxford University Press.
Boltz, M. G., Dyer, R. L., & Miller, A. R. (2010). Jo are you lying to me? Temporal cues for deception. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29(4), 458–466.
Buchan, N. R., Croson, R. T. A., & Solnick, S. (2008). Trust and gender: An examination of behavior and beliefs in the investment game. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 68(3), 466–476.
Buss, D. M. (1995). Psychological sex differences: Origins through sexual selection. American Psychologist, 50(3), 164–168.
Bussey, K., & Bandura, A. (1999). Social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation. Psychological Review, 106(4), 676–713.
Capraro, V. (2018). Gender differences in lying in sender-receiver games: A meta-analysis. Judgment and Decision making, 13, 345–355.
Castilla, C., & Walker, T. (2013). Is ignorance bliss? The effect of asymmetric information between spouses on intra-household allocations. American Economic Review, 103(3), 263–268.
Cavalcanti, T., & Tavares, J. (2016). The output cost of gender discrimination: A model-based macroeconomics estimate. The Economic Journal, 126(590), 109–134.
Chaudhuri, A., & Sbai, E. (2011). Gender differences in trust and reciprocity in repeated gift exchange games. New Zealand Economic Papers, 45(1–2), 81–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/00779954.2011.556072.
Chen, J. J. (2006). Migration and imperfect monitoring: Implications for intra-household allocation. American Economic Review, 96(2), 227–231.
Childs, J. (2012). Gender differences in lying. Economics Letters, 114(2), 147–149.
Coffman, K. B. (2014). Evidence on self-stereotyping and the contribution of ideas. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1625–1660.
Croson, R., & Buchan, N. (1999). Gender and culture: International experimental evidence from trust games. American Economic Review, 89(2), 386–391.
Croson, R., & Gneezy, U. (2009). Gender differences in preferences. Journal of Economic Literature, 47(2), 448–474.
Cuddy, A. J. C., Norton, M. I., & Fiske, S. T. (2005). This old stereotype: The pervasiveness and persistence of the elderly stereotype. Journal of Social Issues, 61(2), 267–285.
De Backer, C. J. S., & Gurven, M. (2006). Whispering down the lane: The economics of vicarious information transfer. Adaptive Behavior, 14(3), 249–264.
Dreber, A., & Johannesson, M. (2008). Gender differences in deception. Economics Letters, 99(1), 197–199.
Dutt, K., Pfaff, D. L., Bernstein, A. F., Dillard, J. S., & Block, C. J. (2016). Gender differences in recommendation letters for postdoctoral fellowships in geoscience. Nature Geoscience, 9(11), 805–808.
Eagly, A. H. (2009). The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender. American Psychologist, 64(8), 644–658.
Eagly, A. H., & Crowley, M. (1986). Gender and helping behavior: A meta-analytic review of the social psychological literature. Psychological Bulletin, 100(3), 283–308.
Eagly, A. H., & Johnson, B. T. (1990). Gender and leadership style: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 108(2), 233–256.
Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (1999). The origins of sex differences in human behavior: Evolved dispositions versus social roles. American Psychologist, 54(6), 408–423.
Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J. (2008). Differences in the economic decisions of men and women: Experimental evidence. In C. R. Plott & V. L. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of experimental economics results (Vol. 1, pp. 509–519). Elsevier.
Ellemers, N. (2018). Gender stereotypes. Annual Review of Psychology, 69(1), 275–298.
Erat, S., & Gneezy, U. (2012). White lies. Management Science, 58(4), 723–733.
Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(6), 878–902.
Friesen, L., & Gangadharan, L. (2012). Individual level evidence of dishonesty and the gender effect. Economics Letters, 117(3), 624–626.
Gambetta, D. (2011). Codes of the underworld: How criminals communicate. Princeton University Press.
Geary, D. C. (2010). Male, female: The evolution of human sex differences (second ed.). American Psychological Association.
Grosch, K., & Rau, H. A. (2017). Gender differences in honesty: The role of social value orientation. Journal of Economic Psychology, 62, 258–267.
Gurven, M. (2004). To give and to give not: The behavioral ecology of human food transfers. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(4), 543–559.
Hasseldine, J. (2002). Gender differences in tax compliance. In S. James (Ed.), Taxation: critical perspectives on the world economy (pp. 125–139). Taylor and Francis.
Hedegaard, M. S., & Tyran, J.-R. (2018). The price of prejudice. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(1), 40–63.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83.
Holm, H. J. (2010). Truth and lie detection in bluffing. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 76(2), 318–324.
Houser, D., Vetter, S., & Winter, J. (2012). Fairness and cheating. European Economic Review, 56(8), 1645–1655.
Isenberg, A. (1964). Deontology and the ethics of lying. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 24(4), 463–480.
Jussim, L., Cain, T. R., Crawford, J. T., Harber, K., & Cohen, F. (2009). The unbearable accuracy of stereotypes. In T. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 199–227). New York: Psychology Press.
Kaplan, H. S., Schniter, E., Smith, V. L., & Wilson, B. J. (2012). Risk and the evolution of human exchange. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1740), 2930–2935.
Kastlunger, B., Dressler, S. G., Kirchler, E., Mittone, L., & Voracek, M. (2010). Sex differences in tax compliance: Differentiating between demographic sex, gender-role orientation, and prenatal masculinization (2D:4D). Journal of Economic Psychology, 31(4), 542–552.
Krebs, J. R., & Davies, N. B. (1984). Animal signals: Mind-reading and manipulation. In J. R. Krebs & N. B. Davies (Eds.), Behavioural ecology: An evolutionary approach (pp. 380–402). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific.
Löckenhoff, C. E., Chan, W., McCrae, R. R., De Fruyt, F., Jussim, L., De Bolle, M., et al. (2014). Gender stereotypes of personality: Universal and accurate? Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45(5), 675–694.
Marlowe, F. W. (2007). Hunting and gathering: The human sexual division of foraging labor. Cross-Cultural Research, 41(2), 170–195.
Maynard Smith, J., & Harper, D. (2004). Animal signals. New York: Oxford University Press.
Orbell, J., Dawes, R., & Schwartz-Shea, P. (1994). Trust, social categories, and individuals: The case of gender. Motivation and Emotion, 18(2), 109–128.
Owhoso, V. (2002). Mitigating gender-specific superior ethical sensitivity when assessing likelihood of fraud risk. Journal of Managerial Issues, 14(3), 360–374.
Phelps, E. S. (1972). The statistical theory of racism and sexism. The American Economic Review, 62(4), 659–661.
Reiley, D. H., Urbancic, M. B., & Walker, M. (2008). Stripped-down poker: A classroom game with signaling and bluffing. The Journal of Economic Education, 39(4), 323–341.
Rigdon, M. L., & Levine, A. S. (2018). Gender, expectations and the price of giving. Review of Behavioral Economics, 5(1), 39–59.
Schniter, E., & Shields, T. W. (2014). Ageism, honesty, and trust. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 51, 19–29.
Schweitzer, M. E., Hershey, J. C., & Bradlow, E. T. (2006). Promises and lies: Restoring violated trust. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 101(1), 1–19.
Scott-Phillips, T. C. (2008). Defining biological communication. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 21(2), 387–395.
Shaub, M. K. (1996). Trust and suspicion: The effects of situational and dispositional factors on auditors’ trust of clients. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 8, 154–174.
Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (2001). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge University Press.
Smith, V. L. (1976). Experimental economics: Induced value theory. The American Economic Review, 66(2), 274–279.
Smith, V. L., Suchanek, G. L., & Williams, A. W. (1988). Bubbles, crashes, and endogenous expectations in experimental spot asset markets. Econometrica, 56(5), 1119–1151.
Smuts, B. B., Cheney, D. L., Seyfarth, R. M., & Wrangham, R. W. (2008). Primate societies. University of Chicago Press.
Stieglitz, J., Kaplan, H., Gurven, M., Winking, J., & Tayo, B. V. (2011). Spousal violence and paternal disinvestment among Tsimane’ forager-horticulturalists. American Journal of Human Biology, 23(4), 445–457.
Stieglitz, J., Gurven, M., Kaplan, H., & Winking, J. (2012). Infidelity, jealousy, and wife abuse among Tsimane forager-farmers: Testing evolutionary hypotheses of marital conflict. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(5), 438–448.
Sznycer, D., Schniter, E., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2015). Regulatory adaptations for delivering information: The case of confession. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(1), 44–51.
Talwar, V., & Lee, K. (2008). Social and cognitive correlates of children’s lying behavior. Child Development, 79(4), 866–881.
U.S. Congress. (1934). Securities & Exchange Act. Public Law 73-291, 48 Stat. 881. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office.
U.S. Congress. (2002). Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Public Law 107-204, 116 Stat. 745. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office.
van der Lee, R., and Ellemers, N. (2015). Gender contributes to personal research funding success in the Netherlands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(40), 12349–12353.
Udry, C. (1996). Gender, agricultural production, and the theory of the household. Journal of Political Economy, 104(5), 1010–1046.
Vogler, C., & Pahl, J. (1993). Social and economic change and the organisation of money within marriage. Work, Employment and Society, 7(1), 71–95.
Vogler, C., & Pahl, J. (1994). Money, power and inequality within marriage. The Sociological Review, 42(2), 263–288.
Vogler, C., Lyonette, C., & Wiggins, R. D. (2008). Money, power and spending decisions in intimate relationships. The Sociological Review, 56(1), 117–143.
Williams, J, E. & Best, D, L. (1982). Measuring sex stereotypes: A thirty-nation study. SAGE Publications.
Wodon, Q, T. & de la Brière, B. (2018). Unrealized potential: The high cost of gender inequality in earnings. World Bank. https://doi.org/10.1596/29865.
Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128(5), 699–727.
Acknowledgments
We commend Dale Brandenburg for his programming and thank Ryan French and Jeff Kirchner for technical assistance. This study was funded by the Economic Science Institute and the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schniter, E., Shields, T.W. Gender, Stereotypes, and Trust in Communication. Hum Nat 31, 296–321 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-020-09376-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-020-09376-3