Female Overconfidence
Men are famously more overconfident in war, in investments, in choosing firm projects, in their performance as managers (but not auditors), as math and econ students, and about their IQ. But these are traditional male areas (i.e., abilities expected more of men in traditional societies). I suspect, however, that women tend to be more overconfident in traditional female areas, such as parenting, housework, shopping, nurturing, and maintaining family relationships. Alas, though I found dozens of papers on overconfidence in traditional male areas, I couldn’t find any on traditional females areas. The closest I found was:
In both the lab and the field, female subjects tend to show greater confidence in their groups than in themselves, while male subjects show greater confidence in themselves than in their groups. (more)
This seems a nice opening for enterprising psych or econ experimentalists.
Reminds me of being in seminar break-out group at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Faced with a stack of Tinker Toys(TM), a time limit, and a model, one of the men in my group made assignments and we started assembly. After a round or two, I said, "I can't do this, let's break it down this way." My group was the only one to use up ALL the Tinker Toys(TM) with lots of time left over for discussion. Only one of the observers (also a woman) - watching from the larger class - brought up the point of my courage in calling out the flaw in the assembly line - the one 'correction' that guaranteed our extraordinary success.
@f26939f398e5b2e21ea353b06370c426:disqus Probably the Kochs' "ideology" is just whatever happens to be favorable to their financial interests.