Behavioral Economics for Leaders

CHAPTER 27Willingness to Compete Starts by Early Childhood: The Pivotal Role of the Family

Numerous studies have shown that women are less willing to compete than men—with consequences for the choice of career and income. But how do such differences emerge, and at what age do they first manifest themselves? The role of the family is all important here.

Sophie likes going to kindergarten. At the age of five she’s been at it three years already. She feels at home in her group and is close to many children. Today, some researchers from the University of Innsbruck, led by my colleague Daniela Glätzle‐Rützler and myself, are present. Sophie is excited because we play games with her and the other kids. For us, it’s an economic research project, but for the children, it’s all a fun game. They are supposed to remove all the star‐shaped objects out of a large quantity of baskets and put them into a container. There are many different things in each of the baskets, so it’s not easy to find all the stars. The game only lasts a minute. The more stars a child removes from the baskets inside of a minute, the more gifts the child can choose from our experiment shop. In a trial run with the kids, so they can understand the task, Sophie proves to be pretty good at fishing out the stars.

Then we explain to Sophie and the other children that they have two ways to play the game. In the first case, the number of gifts they can receive depends solely on how many stars they can pick out of the baskets. ...