《Beauty, Gender and Stereotypes》.pdfVIP

Beauty, Gender and Stereotypes: Evidence from Laboratory Experiments James Andreoni Ragan Petrie University of California - San Diego Georgia State University La Jolla, CA 92093 Atlanta, GA 30303 November 2006 Abstract The existence of a beauty premium in the labor market and the male- female wage gap suggests that appearance can matter in the real world. We explore beauty and gender in a public goods experiment and Önd similar e§ects. We Önd a beauty premium, even though beautiful people contribute, on average, no more or less than others. The beauty premium, however, disappears when we provide information on individual contributions, and becomes a beauty penalty. Players seem to expect beautiful people to be more cooperative. Relative to these expectations, they appear more selÖsh, which in turn results in less cooperation by others. These appear to be clear examples of stereotyping. We also Önd a substantial beneÖt to being male, especially with information. This is primarily due to men being better ìleaders.î Men tend to make large contributions, and people follow their example and give more in later rounds. We are grateful to Terence Burnham, Marco Castillo, Rachel Croson, Daniel Hamermesh, and Bart Lipman for helpful comments. We also thank the National Science Foundation for Önancial support. 1. Introduction It is well known from labor market studies that beauty and gender can have big e§ects on earnings. Hamermesh and Biddle (1994) have shown a signiÖcant premium to beauty, with attractive people earning more money than unattractiv