2024-01-01 15:43:17
In the job market, a competitive spirit seems to be sought by many employers. This is probably why we notice that former athletes often benefit from certain favors when they are employed. They can take the form of a bonus salarialvarying from 5% to 20% according to studies,social advantages or even a greater employability. Several studies have also shown that the practice of sport in competition shapes behaviors, regardless of the type of sport practiced. Exposed to intense competition, athletes’ risk tolerance would be amplified and their desire to win would constitute the fundamental driving force that drives them.
Could this be a way to reduce gender gaps? If women developed, through the practice of competitive sport, a profile more inclined to risk-taking and a competitive spirit, would they have more job opportunities and higher income prospects?
To demonstrate this, we carried out a experience comparing athletes and non-athletes in their attitudes towards risk and their taste for competition. The results highlight similarities between female athletes and male non-athletes.
A practice of sport that reduces gaps
How do you measure whether someone is competitive or not? To do this, we used a variant of protocol developed by two women, Muriel Niederle of Stanford University and Lise Vesterlund of the University of Pittsburgh. They were interested in gender gaps in this area: a lack of competitiveness among women and excessive competitiveness among men, in comparison to their respective performances. In our experiment, participants were thus invited to carry out two tasks successively: a counting task and a ball throwing task.
In the first task, you had to count, in five minutes, the number of “1s” present in a succession of tables where they were mixed with “0s”. In the second, three foam balls had to be thrown into a wastebasket two meters apart.
In each case, participants had the choice between two methods of remuneration. First option, “payment by piecework”, which guarantees the participant to be paid according to their performance: each correct count or each ball in the basket earning 50 cents. It was also possible to opt for “tournament payment”: this method of remuneration puts the participant in competition with other participants who have also made this choice. This option allows you to receive a higher gain, 2 euros per correct count or per ball in the basket if you are the winner. It nevertheless carries a risk: only the participant who achieves the best score in their group is paid. The others gain nothing. By choosing the tournament payout, participants reveal their taste for competition and appetite for risk-taking, which was also measured independently from a specific individual risk-taking task.
78 athletes practicing an individual sport and participating regularly (at least every month) in national and/or international competitions were selected to take part in the game, with 77 other participants not involved in sports championships. Approximately 85% of participants were students. The two samples are comparable in terms of distribution by age, gender and level of study. All participants were volunteers.
61% of athletes chose the tournament for the ball throwing task compared to only 27% of non-athletes. For the counting task, 57% of athletes chose the tournament compared to 41% of non-athletes. Athletic women are found to be less competitive than their male counterparts, but more competitive than non-athlete men. In the ball throwing task, 50% of female athletes opted for the tournament compared to 36% of non-athlete males and only 20% of non-athlete females. Similarly for the counting task, 50% of female athletes opted for the tournament compared to 42% of male non-athletes.
A similar result is observed for risk tolerance. Athlete women have a level of risk tolerance comparable to that of non-athlete men, while in the general population almost all studies conclude that men have a greater risk tolerance than women.
These observations suggest that competitive sport participation makes female athletes more similar to men in their risk appetite and competitiveness, thereby reducing gender gaps in these two dimensions of their preferences.
A competitive spirit to develop from school?
What explanatory factors? Four hypotheses are possible.
First, female athletes might perform better in competitive tasks than non-athletes. They might prefer to be paid in tournaments because they believe they can achieve higher scores under the pressure of competition. Second, female athletes might have a greater appetite for risk and for this reason opt for the tournament more frequently than non-athletes. Third, they would be less prosocial than non-athletes: they would be less concerned regarding the negative consequences inflicted on others by the choice of tournament, that is to say the fact that there are losers who are not rewarded for their efforts in the tasks. Finally, fourthly, female athletes would have developed a strong taste for competition.
The first two hypotheses are clearly rejected by our data. The scores of female athletes on the two experimental tasks were no better than those of non-athletes. Although they are slightly more willing to take risks than non-athletes, risk tolerance has a negligible effect on the probability of choosing the tournament.
The third hypothesis concerning pro-sociality is also rejected. This factor is measured using experiments forged by experimental economics: the dictator game and the prisoner’s dilemma game. In the first, participants are paired anonymously. One of the members of the pair, the dictator, receives €10 from the experimenter, the other receives nothing. The dictator can transfer all or part of the amount received to his counterpart, or choose to keep everything.
The games of “prisoner’s dilemma” are inspired by the following situation. Two criminals are caught and thrown into prison, in separate cells. When questioned, they have the choice between remaining silent or placing the blame on their accomplice. Speaking if the other is silent offers freedom for the first and a heavy penalty for the second. If both speak, the penalty will nevertheless be heavier than if they had both remained silent.
Certainly, we were able to demonstrate that female athletes are less generous in the dictator game and less cooperative in the prisoner’s dilemma. However, pro-sociability measured in this way does not display a significant correlation with the probability of choosing the tournament.
We therefore conclude that female athletes’ taste for competition is the determining factor in their propensity to choose the tournament, a conclusion supported by the responses to an independent questionnaire measuring competitiveness. Note also that choosing the tournament allows you to compare yourself to others and to know if your own score was better than that of other people chosen at random, information that is particularly valued and sought following by athletes.
Sports practice incorporating a strong competitive component thus seems to make female athletes more competitive and develop their taste for risk, two virtues appreciated and sought following by many employers. The involvement of women in sporting competition thus appears to be a means of reducing certain gender gaps, a path which might be favored in theeducation of girls from an early age.
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