Who do you listen to? The effects of perceived gender on decision making
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Date
2023-12
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Previous research indicates heuristics, presented as visual cues (e.g., spiders/butterflies, Republican/Democrat), can alter decision-making on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Implicit bias, an automatic categorization process, can affect women, who may experience discrimination and prejudicially-fueled behaviors towards them. Implicit biases can impact decision making, but to date, no research has examined if gender can be used as a heuristic in risky decision making. I hypothesized that performance on the IGT could be impacted by the color of the card decks, using pink to activate implicit biases about women and blue to activate implicit biases about men. Additionally, I hypothesized an interaction between the IGT condition and participant gender. In Study 1, participants were 334 Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers randomly assigned to complete one of three IGTs: (1) pink-Decks C+D, blue-Decks A+B; (2) blue-Decks C+D, pink-Decks A+B; or (3) the standard IGT. Results provided no evidence that the color of the IGT decks impacted decisions. However, when examining the individual deck selections, it is likely that participant gender had some impact on decision making. In Study 2, participants were 710 MTurk workers randomly assigned to complete one of the same IGT versions as Study 1, but with an implicit association test (IAT) used to activate potential gender-based biases. When using the traditional IGT scoring, there was little support for implicit gender biases affecting decisions. However, the pattern of individual deck selections indicated an in-group bias: women tended to select from the pink decks when they were advantageous and men tended to select from the blue decks when they were advantageous. Overall, the present studies provide mixed support for gender as a heuristic on the IGT, as additional research is needed to tease apart the influence of the individual-deck differences on subsequent decisions.