The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life

by Gneezy, Uri

  Girls Against Boys

  Larry Summers was not talking about entry-level jobs. He was talking about scientists. So what happens when smart female mathematicians and scientists compete against men? To find out, we asked groups of three men and three women to solve a series of mazes on a computer in exchange for money.9 The setting was the Technion, the so-called MIT of Israel. It’s a tough school to get into, and men constitute 60 percent of the student body. The women at the Technion have to prove from their earliest years that they are every bit as good at math and science as the guys, the implicit assumption being that women have to work harder to show that they can be Einsteins, too.

  One of the women in the experimental group was Ira (a common girls’ name for Russian immigrants in Israel). Ira was a brilliant student who had played computer games all her life, and she enjoyed technology and sophisticated technical concepts. She was born in Moscow and immigrated to Israel with her parents and older brother when she was ten. Even when she was young, math was her passion, so her decision to try to get into the Technion was not surprising. But being there wasn’t easy; she was the star of her math class in high school, but at the Technion, everyone was smart. She had to work extra hard and compete with other students to pass the courses. Many less-committed students failed along the way and switched to less competitive fields. But Ira did well. She worked diligently, sleeping only four hours at night, and gave up her ballet practice. She knew she was going to make it.

  Unlike some of her female peers, Ira didn’t feel discouraged by the idea of a career in science and technology.10 Nevertheless, we wanted to know whether her gender-identification as a woman would affect her desire to compete for money in our experiment. Would she go all-out in a competitive game if incentives were involved?

  In the experiments, participants were asked to solve as many mazes as they could in fifteen minutes, and receiving a dollar for every maze solved. When we then measured how well participants in these groups did, we found that the women performed pretty much the same as the men. But other groups of participants were given a competitive incentive: the person who solved the most mazes was paid proportionally more. In the heat of the battle, would Ira increase her effort?

  It turned out that the male participants responded to the competitive incentive by significantly increasing the number of mazes they solved during the fifteen minutes, but Ira and the other women did not perform as well. In the competitive condition, the women solved, on average, the same number of mazes as they did in the noncompetitive one. The hypothesis that women are less competitive than men seemed to hold firm, even for Ira and the other bright women of the Technion.

  In a later experiment, we mimicked something you might remember from your childhood.11 Think about running as fast as you can alone, or next to someone else. If you are competitive, just having someone running next to you might motivate you to run faster and win an imaginary “race.” You just transformed an innocent situation into a competition. And if you’re less competitive, maybe you don’t care who’s next to you—you just run fast.

  As you might have guessed, we wanted to test whether young boys and girls would have different competitive tendencies. To do so, we went to visit some fourth-grade schoolkids in Israel. In a physical education class, we first asked kids to run forty meters on a track, one at a time. After the teacher timed the individual students’ results, the students who ran at similar speeds raced against each other. We didn’t offer incentives, and we didn’t even tell the kids that this was a competition. The kids simply had to run neck and neck.

  As we found in the Technion maze experiment, the boys ended up reacting more strongly to the competitive environment, running faster than when they had run alone. The girls, again, didn’t seem to react to the heightened competition. They ran about as fast as when they had run alone—even when they were competing against only against girls. Once more, it looked like girls didn’t do as well in a competitive context.

  Eventually our research led us to visit the most patriarchal and matrilineal societies in the world. This approach was meant to provide some preliminary insights on how cultural influences shape competitive preferences.

  One frosty night a few years back, in a heavy dose of male bonding, we were sitting around playing poker with a bunch of other guys in College Park, Maryland. Between cigar chomps and shots of whisky, we asked ourselves why most women didn’t seem to enjoy these oh-so-fun activities as much as we did. But, more importantly, we also wondered about the results of the experiments conducted at the Technion and in the school. Were women simply born to dislike competition, or did society influence their tastes and preferences? Was the lack of competitiveness inherent in women or a learned behavior? If the latter, exactly what did nurture—or the fact that culture might be linked to their competitive inclinations—have to do with their learning? And if the differences turned out to be socialized, would our daughters have a fair shot at succeeding in a competitive society?

  There was only one way to find out. We had to get away from Western society. With support from the National Science Foundation, we set out to test assumptions about biologically based competitiveness in two of the most culturally different places on the planet. We conducted experiments in a society in which women held virtually no power, and in one in which they ran the show. We literally went to the ends of the earth to tease out the question that Freud, Darwin, and numerous other psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists after them have theorized about, but have had difficulty testing.

  In the process, we were able to develop scientific experiments that permitted us a unique glimpse into women’s behavior in markets across extremely different societies that held women in diametrically opposite roles. In exploring the underpinnings of their behavior, we gained insight into this question: Are women from every walk of life less competitively inclined than men?

  With the help of some anthropologist friends, we identified two polar-opposite tribes—the ultra-patriarchal Masai tribe of Tanzania, and the matrilineal Khasi of northeast India (the latter of which we’ll encounter more in the following chapter). What would happen if we compared the way men and women in these tribes competed under the same experimental conditions?12

  A Trip to Tanzania

  On the plains below Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa, proud Masai tribesmen, dressed in brightly colored robes and carrying their spears, follow the calling of their cattle-herding ancestors. The more cattle a man has, the more wealth he possesses. A man’s cows are more important to a Masai man than his wives. A cattle-wealthy Masai man can have as many as ten wives.

  The Masai culture is very unkind to its women. The men, who tend not to wed until they are around thirty years old, marry women who are in their early teens. If you ask a man, “How many children do you have?” he will count only his sons. Women are taught from birth to be subservient. A wife is confined to working in her home and her village. If her husband is absent, a woman must ask an elder male for permission to travel, seek health care, or make any important decision.

  On a bright Sunday morning, we made our way to one of the Masai villages to coordinate the week’s experiments. We passed lots of families walking to the market more than ten miles away. In every group, the man walked first, carrying only his stick. About ten feet behind him walked his wife, a huge, heavily-loaded basket balanced on her head. The woman typically had a baby strapped to her back; with her free hands, she led her older children along. The men didn’t even look back to see how their wives and children were faring.

  Basically, Masai women are chattel. “Men treat us like donkeys,” one Masai woman told some other researchers.13

  When we pulled up to the Masai village, we were greeted by a wonderful call-and-response chanting of the women (the Masai seem to sing this way almost constantly). Koinet Sankale, the Masai chief whose first name, we were told, means “the tall one,” came out to greet us. Handsome and broad-browed, he was an honored warrior who had pr
oved his bravery as a pubescent boy by spearing a lion. The beast had left distinct teeth-marks on his face, his upper chest, and both arms. He walked up to us with a long, loping stride and shook our hands. Then he turned and introduced us to thirty of his tribesmen, who squinted at us suspiciously. The men wore colorful, loose, plaid or solid-colored cloaklike garments that they threw over their shoulders. They wore draping earrings and necklaces made of shiny beads, and had marked their arms and faces with slashes of red ochre. Most of them were missing some teeth.

  After the introductions, we enjoyed a meal of barbequed goat together in the midst of a circle of their flat-roofed homes, called bomas, and listened to the sounds of the mooing cattle, with whom the Masai appear to have a symbiotic relationship.

  After sleeping in a less-than-wonderful local hotel, we woke the next day and discovered bad news. We had come to Tanzania to run a pilot test using the same maze experiment we’d used with Ira, except without computers. The Masai participants were supposed to solve the mazes on paper, using pens. But when confronted with these simplest of tools, the village women scratched their heads. The women had never held a pen, and were not willing to start now.

  We were clearly in trouble.

  Someone suggested building mazes out of wood so the villagers could solve them by moving a small piece of wood in them. Our collaborator on the project, Ken Leonard, who is an expert on the Masai, knew a fellow who had a workshop in town. The next day, with the assistance of a local car mechanic and a carpenter, we spent twelve hours sweating under the blazing African sun building a maze out of wood. The villagers watched as we worked, staring and laughing at the funny white men who were apparently attempting to build a child’s toy. After a long day of hard work, we had one maze built. Unfortunately, it was indicative of our talent as carpenters. The maze was unsolvable. So now we were in even more trouble. How could we show up at the village the next day with nothing for the throng of assembled tribespeople to do?

  Then came the eureka moment. On his way to the hotel, Uri saw a store that sold tennis balls and buckets. The task we decided to use (and that we have used in many other experiments since then) was simple—we asked our participants to toss a tennis ball into a bucket.

  The villagers had never before done anything like shooting baskets, so there was no practice advantage or gender advantage. In addition, we thought this task would provide us with a quick indication of an individual’s initial proclivity to compete. All it would take to land a ball in a bucket was good aim.

  In the morning, our team returned to the village, armed with several cans of tennis balls, small toy buckets, and lots of money. We found the people waiting for us, and we divided them into two groups. We then invited participants—one from each group—to step over to a private place where a member of the research team waited for them. They were told the task involved throwing a tennis ball into a bucket from a distance of three meters, or about ten feet. Each participant would get ten tries to land the ball in the bucket so that it stayed there.

  We next asked the villagers to choose one of two payment options: in the first option, participants would receive the equivalent of $1.50—a full day’s wage—each time they landed a ball in the bucket. In the second option, they would receive the equivalent of $4.50 for each successful pitch, but only if they were better than their opponent. If both participants succeeded the same number of times, they would both get $1.50 for each success. But if their opponent proved more apt, they received no payment for the experiment. That is, we asked the participants to choose between two options: one in which their payment depended only on their success, and one in which they would compete with someone else.

  The young people—especially the men—seemed to be excited by this idea, whereas the older people, regardless of gender, seemed a bit suspicious. (You would probably be suspicious, too. After all, imagine someone coming over to your leafy suburb and offering you and your neighbors a week’s pay to play what appeared to be nothing more than a silly game.)

  The first man to step up was a large, burly fellow named Murunga, who looked to be somewhere in his late fifties. Murunga was a true tribal patriarch, with six wives, thirty children, and an unfathomable number of grandchildren. He chose to compete. He drew back his arm and aimed the ball at the bucket. Tossing the ball a little too hard, he missed the first try and roared his disappointment. On the second try, the ball skipped off the lip of the bucket. But he landed the third ball and grinned from ear to ear. And so he continued throwing the remaining seven balls. After having landed a few successful tosses and learning that he had been successful with more tosses than his competitor, he collected his money and walked off looking pleased.

  It wasn’t long before word got around that some ridiculous Americans were doling out wads of money. Ultimately, 155 pre-selected people came to play the game. By the end of the day, the villagers didn’t want to let us leave. We managed to escape by jumping into our car with the remainder of our money—which we needed in order to conduct similar experiments in other villages—and we tore away from the scene, the people chasing at our heels.

  After a couple of weeks of such experiments in various villages, we tallied the data. Would these patriarchal men show themselves to be more competitive than those in the United States, Israel, or any other developed nation? Would the women show themselves to be less so?

  The figure on page 46 tells the story. In short, we found that the men and women in Tanzania were a lot like the men and women we studied in developed nations. Whereas 50 percent of the Masai men chose to compete, only 26 percent of the women did.

  This figure compares how men and women in the United States and in the Masai tribes fared in equivalent competitive games.

  Again, it looked as if most of the women just didn’t want to compete—but, perhaps surprisingly, they were not much less competitive than women in Western cultures everywhere.

  The Right Person for the Job

  Meanwhile, back in the United States, Liz was trying to land a job.

  Liz was a forty-two-year-old woman who applied for a job as creative head for a New York–based direct marketing company. Liz had lots of experience as the former head of a creative department, and she came with all the right qualifications and abilities. But the hiring process was long and competitive, and hundreds of people had applied.

  To sort the wheat from the chaff, the hiring manager and human resources department asked top candidates, including Liz, to participate in multiple interviews. As the process became more competitive, the candidates were asked to design an outer envelope for a direct mail package within an hour. If done correctly, this chore would actually have taken much longer, and it had little to do with the actual job of managing an in-house team of twenty designers. The test had more to do with testing an ability to work fast in a competitive environment—more appropriate to, say, a position working on a trading floor—than it had to do with the actual work of getting people to open envelopes.

  At the end of the day, the company hired a man who did better in the competitive process. Without having specific competencies in mind, the company screened out the better candidate. For Liz, it meant that she “lost” to someone who was less qualified. For the company, it meant that they passed on the more talented applicant in favor of the more competitive one.

  As it turns out, many hiring managers base their hiring decisions on intuition and what was done in the past (typically how it was done by their old boss). In many such cases, these old hiring practices were based on a notion that was either misconceived or has now changed—and usually favored men. In study after study, it’s been shown that when members of an all-male board have to pick a new board member or a CEO, they usually hire someone who looks like them.14 A 2012 University of Dayton Law School paper noted that “virtually every recent report or study describes women’s progress in achieving greater representation on corporate boards of directors as ‘stalled’ or some similar adjective,”15 despite the fact
that when women do serve on boards, their companies’ stock values rise.16

  But you can only keep top talent down for so long in markets. Soon, the time will come for women to enjoy their rightful places at the helms of organizations, and companies that act sooner rather than later will benefit.

  In the next chapter, we’ll get to the bottom of all this.

  CHAPTER THREE

  What Can a Matrilineal Society Teach Us About Women and Competition?

  A Visit to the Khasi

  As you saw in the previous chapter, all of our experiments—from those we conducted online with Craigslist, to the Technion, to the races with the schoolkids, to our visit to the Masai—confirmed that women just don’t like to compete as much as men and react to competitive scenarios differently than men do. This, in and of itself, provides an intriguing explanation for the gender gap.

  But, we still wanted to know, why is this so? Is there an important innate difference between the sexes that would lead them to act this way regardless of how they are raised? Or do societal influences play a vital role in our competitive inclinations?

  Our visit to the matrilineal society of the Khasi helped to answer these foundational questions. Let’s explore the exotic life of the Khasi. Put on your seatbelt, because you are in for an incredible ride.

  Minott (the driver who picked us up at the airport after we landed in India, whom you met in our Introduction) was our initial guide into the matrilineal society of the Khasi people. With him, we crossed over into a bizarre world of reverse sexism. By our standards, of course, it seemed unfair that Minott could not own a house, even if he could have afforded one, and that his personal opportunities were stymied. At the same time, we got a fabulous window into what happens when women hold their culture’s economic purse strings.