Battle of the Sexes: the Role of Gender in Survivor
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Battle of the Sexes: The Role of Gender in Survivor Sophie Truscott* Advised by Sara Hernández MMSS Senior Thesis, Northwestern University June 2017 Abstract This paper utilizes data from the first 33 seasons of the American reality television show Survivor to analyze the role of gender within competitive environments. Specifically, I use contestant-level voting and performance data to model how gender impacts contestants’ voting decisions, both in eliminating other contestants throughout the game and voting for a winner in the finals. I also observe potential differences in elimination order between male and female contestants with similar performance attributes. I find that when the majority of contestants voting against a contestant are female, the contestant is more likely to be male, and vice versa. Furthermore, increasing the number of women voting against a contestant increases the likelihood of the eliminated contestant being male. Additionally, I find that the voting decisions of jurors in the finals do not seem to be affected by the juror’s gender. While my paper finds some significant results regarding the role of gender in Survivor, I also conclude that many of the most important variables impacting a contestant’s success in Survivor are nuanced qualitative interpersonal factors not captured in my dataset that may be quite difficult to measure quantitatively. * I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Sara Hernández, for her guidance, support, and encouragement throughout this process; our teaching assistant, Aniket Panjwani, for helping to provide structure and direction to my analysis; Professor Joseph Ferrie for guiding our class through the thesis process; and Nicole Schneider for her administrative assistance. Thank you also to Jeff Pitman of True Dork Times for generously sharing his dataset and personal insights with me. Finally, thank you to my family and friends for their endless love and support. 1 1 Introduction While a number of researchers have conducted studies to examine the gender differences in individuals’ competitive behavior, most studies utilize simple, controlled tests to model competitive situations which often differ greatly from the competitive situations that individuals encounter in real life. This paper aims to minimize the impact of this environment discrepancy by studying the role of gender within the reality television show Survivor, a game that more accurately models the nuances of real world competition. Survivor is an American reality television series in which contestants are stranded in a remote location and compete against each other until one contestant remains. The game requires contestants to utilize their social, strategic, and physical skills, and the $1 million prize provides a strong incentive for players to play the game to the best of their abilities. As such, Survivor acts a useful natural experiment to analyze how patterns of competitive behavior differ between men and women. There are, of course, drawbacks associated with using a televised reality show to analyze human behavior. First, observed insights are likely to be impacted by producers’ editing decisions intended to make the show as entertaining as possible, and since each season’s 39 days are compressed into 13 hour-long episodes, the majority of the footage from the game is not available to viewers. To overcome the potential effects of these editing biases, this paper relies only on the most objective observable variables on the show that are unaffected by editing decisions. Second, game show contestants tend to share certain qualities; people who self-select to participate in such competitions are usually more competitive, self-confident, risk- seeking, and attention-seeking than the average person. This paper does not formally account for this discrepancy, but it is an important point to keep in mind when interpreting results. Finally, one might consider how a reality show’s viewership might impact contestant’s behavior within the game—if contestants know that their behavior in the game will be widely viewed, they may choose to change their true behavior for fear of being viewed negatively by the show’s 2 audience.1 There is, however, little evidence to believe that Survivor contestants play the game with this mindset, and if nothing else, the $1 million prize acts as a powerful incentive for contestants to act on their true intentions rather than “playing a role” to create a particular image of themselves for viewers. My analysis focuses on the role of gender within three competitive aspects of Survivor: (1) the elimination of contestants at Tribal Councils, (2) the voting decisions made by jurors at the Final Tribal Council, and (3) the elimination of contestants with similar performance qualities. First, I examine how the gender of the contestants voting against a contestant is related to the targeted contestant’s gender; in other words, I consider if there is a gender-based influence on which contestants eliminate male and female contestants. Second, I investigate how jurors of different genders are affected by their relationships with each of the finalists; specifically, I test whether there is a statistically significant difference between male and female jurors’ propensity to forgive finalists for a personal betrayal. Finally, I provide diagrams to observe potential differences in the elimination order of similarly skilled male and female contestants. Understanding how men and women behave in the face of competition can help to identify how particular gender-based characteristics and behavior may help or hinder individuals’ competitive performance. There are endless possible applications for these insights, but perhaps the most relevant use of gender-based competitive behavior patterns in today’s society is to help adjust the competitive nature of the modern workplace to create a more even playing field for professional men and women. 2 Literature Review This section provides an overview on existing literature on the topics of reality television and the relationship between gender and competition. I will also describe where my research fits in among this existing work. 1 “Negative” in this case would likely differ from contestant to contestant. For example, some contestants may worry about being perceived by viewers as domineering, while other contestants may not want the audience to view them as passive. 3 2.1 Existing Research on Gender and Competition Since the intention of this paper is to investigate the relationship between gender and competitiveness, using Survivor as a natural experiment, it is relevant to examine existing literature and theories concerning gender and competition. Lee, Kesebir, and Pillutla (2016) find that women view same-gender workplace competition as less desirable than their male counterparts do, and in the presence in same-gender competition, women’s relationships with one another often suffer. Lee et al. cite gender socialization research that women are taught to value equality and harmony while hierarchical competition is a critical aspect of masculinity; therefore, in competitive workplace situations that create hierarchy, men welcome competition while women shy away from competition, particularly in situations that pit them against other women. On the other hand, Burow, Beblo, Beninger, and Schröder (2017) find in an online experiment that women prefer to enter competitions when their competitors are known to be women. Burow et al. find that women who correctly or underestimated their task abilities were more likely to display this behavior, while women who overestimated their abilities enter competitions regardless of their opponents’ genders (women’s actual abilities, however, did not affect their willingness to compete in different gender environments). While these two studies from Lee et al. and Burow et al. may seem to be at odds with each other, the studies together present a more thorough, complex picture of gender and competition. When faced with same-sex competition that yields hierarchical rankings, Lee et al. find that women shy away for fear of disrupting equality with their female peers, but if women have to compete, Burow et al. suggest that they prefer to do so among female competitors with whom they feel less intimidated to reveal their true abilities. Dato and Nieken (2014) conducted an experiment to investigate competitive gender differences in games where players had the opportunity to sabotage their opponents. Dato and Nieken find that men are more likely to sabotage their opponents, which led to a higher probability of winning. However, since players in the study incurred a cost when they chose to sabotage, men and women had the same earnings on average. Dato and Nieken believe that men are generally more status-seeking than women, so men are more willing to “invest” in victory by 4 incurring a sabotage cost, even if doing so decreases their eventual earnings. In an experiment with Swedish adolescents, Dreber, von Essen, and Ranehill (2014) find that girls in competitive settings are more altruistic and risk-averse than boys. Finally, Halladay (2017) conducted a two-stage experiment in which subjects first play a game in teams and rate how positive, negative, and neutral their feelings are toward each of their teammates. Then subjects play a second game against one of their teammates from the previous round. Halladay finds that women in competitive situations respond more strongly to negative emotions than men do; women’s performance