Does gender diversity promote non-conformity?

Arbeitspapier

Failure to express minority views may distort the behavior of company boards, committees, juries, and other decision-making bodies. Devising a new experimental procedure to measure such conformity in a judgment task, we compare the degree of conformity in groups with varying gender composition. Overall, our experiments offer little evidence that gender composition affects expression of minority views. A robust finding is that a subject's lack of ability predicts both a true propensity to accept others' judgment (informational social influence) and a propensity to agree despite private doubt (normative social influence). Thus, as an antidote to conformity in our experiments, high individual ability seems more effective than group diversity.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IFN Working Paper ; No. 1091

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: General ; Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact ; Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations ; Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
• Subject: Conformity ; Gender Differences ; Group Composition ; Skill

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Amini, Makan ; Ekström, Mathias ; Ellingsen, Tore ; Johannesson, Magnus ; Strömsten, Fredrik
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
• (where): Stockholm
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/129655
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET