Examining the Effects of Gender and Written Communication Style on Task Completion
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St. Cloud State University theRepository at St. Cloud State Culminating Projects in Economics Department of Economics 3-2021 To Perform or Not to Perform? Examining the Effects of Gender and Written Communication Style on Task Completion Alvaro Plachejo [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/econ_etds Recommended Citation Plachejo, Alvaro, "To Perform or Not to Perform? Examining the Effects of Gender and Written Communication Style on Task Completion" (2021). Culminating Projects in Economics. 17. https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/econ_etds/17 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Economics at theRepository at St. Cloud State. It has been accepted for inclusion in Culminating Projects in Economics by an authorized administrator of theRepository at St. Cloud State. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To Perform or Not to Perform? Examining the Effects of Gender and Written Communication Style on Task Completion By Álvaro Plachejo A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of St. Cloud State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Applied Economics March, 2021 Thesis Committee: Mana Komai Molle, Chairperson Patricia Hughes Susan Parault Dowds 2 Abstract I study the effect of two power categories, gender (male/female) and written communication style (strong language/weak language) on performance. To examine this relationship, these two attributes are considered in a request to perform a task using an experimental design on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Three variations of the experiment are performed: announcing an additional monetary reward for task performance, not announcing the reward, and explicitly warning that no reward is provided. I find significant differences in task performance caused by communication style such that weak language achieves 22.4 percent higher probability of task performance for male requesters while strong language has 11 percent more likelihood to achieve task performance for female requesters. Only the last experiment finds robust results and in two experiments no conclusions can be drawn due to the lack of variation in task performance. Omitted variable bias and lack of sample power might explain inconsistent results across experimental designs, and, while the lack of monetary reward in the third experiment does not allow for conclusions about task performance in hierarchical relationships, it does on the willingness of participants to perform a helpful act for the requester. Keywords: Gender, Language style, Leadership, Performance 3 Table of Contents Chapter Page List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. 4 List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. 5 Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2. Conceptual Framework ................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 3. Methodology ............................................................................................................... 16 Experimental Design ....................................................................................................... 16 Econometric Model ......................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 4. Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 27 Chapter 5. Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 43 References ..................................................................................................................................... 47 Appendix A: Survey ..................................................................................................................... 52 4 List of Tables Table Page Table 1. List of socioeconomic control variables. ........................................................................ 22 Table 2. Summary statistics (experiment 1). ................................................................................ 28 Table 3. Summary statistics (experiment 2) ................................................................................. 29 Table 4. Summary statistics (experiment 3). ................................................................................ 30 Table 5. Two-Tailed Mean T-Test between Experiments ............................................................ 31 Table 6. Two Tailed Mean Test of Performance by Treatment .................................................... 32 Table 7. Regression analysis of double interaction. ..................................................................... 33 Table 8. Linear restriction F-Test, Model 1 (p-values). ................................................................ 35 Table 9. Regression analysis of second model ............................................................................. 36 Table 10. Linear restriction F-Test, Model 2 (p-values). .............................................................. 39 Table 11. Treatment effects for equation 1. Probit Analysis ........................................................ 39 Table 12. Treatment effects for equation 2. Probit Analysis ........................................................ 40 5 List of Figures Figure Page Figure 1. Survey Algorithm. ......................................................................................................... 19 6 Chapter 1. Introduction Female leaders may face barriers in diverse settings by conscious or unconscious discrimination of followers based on gender roles expectations, influencing performance, and explaining the fact that females are less likely to experience mobility in the organizational hierarchy and, when they do, they face different treatment than their male counterparts. The purpose of this research is to further examine the relationship between power status and the ability to influence task completion. Specifically, this study seeks to measure the effect of two power categories, gender (male/female) and written communication style (strong language/weak language), to determine performance. An experimental design is used in which various groups will receive the same request using different frames to measure the impact of framing on task performance. Exploring these issues is fundamental to the field of management because it can confirm performance biases and help to develop an understanding on mechanisms to reduce them, thus improving leaders’ performance. Additionally, leaders can learn to navigate those biases during leadership transition periods until the capacity to change them is built. In this context, I provide contributions to three main areas of the literature. In the field of behavioral economics and framing, by continuing the analysis of framing across gender. Additionally, the experiment is of interest to further understand language style use, a topic that is unexplored in the literature. Finally, the experimental design contributes to further the understanding of differences in influence between gender roles. In this context, where task performance is of relevance to the productivity of organizations, awareness of gender differences in leadership may be key to overcome gender barriers and discrimination in management. 7 This project researches the relationship between two attributes of a request, gender and communication style, and the performance of a task by means of an experimental design. Four hypotheses guide this inquiry. First, (H.1.) the gender of the requester influences the decision to perform the task. In second place, (H.2.) the language of the request will influence the decision to perform the task. Next, I study congruity between the gender role of the requester and the language of the request, under the hypothesis that (H.3.) a male requester using strong language achieves different performance from followers than a female requester using weak language. The last hypothesis, following the literature on framing, is that (H.4.) these effects are different depending on the followers’ gender. An experimental design in Amazon Mechanical Turk tests these hypotheses by offering a sociodemographic survey that participants complete for a reward, followed by an additional task that participants choose whether or not to perform. The task request, however, is randomly framed with attributes of gender and language style of the requester. Therefore, the treatment is entirely exogenous. Furthermore, the experiment is repeated three times, with variations in the nature of the incentives: either announcing an additional monetary reward for task performance, not providing the reward, and explicitly announcing that no reward is provided. I find significant differences in task performance caused by communication style and congruity between language and gender, but only in the last experimental design. The former treatment effect has a large magnitude of 11 to 24 percent, showing that weak language is more effective than strong language for male leaders and the opposite for female leaders. The latter