Civic capital and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic☆.

Using mobile phone and survey data, we show that during the early phases of COVID-19, voluntary social distancing was greater in areas with higher civic capital and amongst individuals exhibiting a higher sense of civic duty. This effect is robust to including controls for political ideology, income, age, education, and other local-level characteristics. This result is present for U.S. individuals and U.S. counties as well as European regions. Moreover, we show that after U.S. states began re-opening, high civic capital counties maintained a more sustained level of social distancing, while low civic capital counties did not. Finally, we show that U.S. individuals report a higher tendency to use protective face masks in high civic capital counties. Our evidence points to the importance of considering the level of civic capital in designing public policies not only in response to pandemics, but also more generally.

How stereotypes impair women's careers in science.

Women outnumber men in undergraduate enrollments, but they are much less likely than men to major in mathematics or science or to choose a profession in these fields. This outcome often is attributed to the effects of negative sex-based stereotypes. We studied the effect of such stereotypes in an experimental market, where subjects were hired to perform an arithmetic task that, on average, both genders perform equally well. We find that without any information other than a candidate's appearance (which makes sex clear), both male and female subjects are twice more likely to hire a man than a woman. The discrimination survives if performance on the arithmetic task is self-reported, because men tend to boast about their performance, whereas women generally underreport it. The discrimination is reduced, but not eliminated, by providing full information about previous performance on the task. By using the Implicit Association Test, we show that implicit stereotypes are responsible for the initial average bias in sex-related beliefs and for a bias in updating expectations when performance information is self-reported. That is, employers biased against women are less likely to take into account the fact that men, on average, boast more than women about their future performance, leading to suboptimal hiring choices that remain biased in favor of men.

Between- and within-sex variation in hormonal responses to psychological stress in a large sample of college students.

This study investigated (1) sex differences in hormonal responses to psychosocial stress; (2) the relation between variability in pre-test hormone concentrations and stress-induced hormonal changes; and (3) some possible sources of within-sex variation in pre-test hormone concentrations and in hormonal responses to the test in a large human subject population. To this end, changes in salivary concentrations of testosterone and cortisol in response to a mild psychosocial stressor (a set of computerized economic decision-making tests) were measured in a sample of over 500 MBA students. Males had higher concentrations of testosterone and cortisol than females both before and after the test. After taking effects of time of testing on hormone concentrations into account, testosterone showed a post-test decrease in males but not in females. Cortisol level increased in both sexes but the post-test increase was larger in females than in males. At the individual level, the pre-test concentrations of testosterone and cortisol predicted both the direction and the magnitude of the post-test hormone change, so that low pre-test hormone concentrations showed large post-test increases whereas high pre-test concentrations showed large post-test decreases. Within-sex variation in hormone concentrations was not accounted for by variation in 2D:4D digit length ratio, a marker of prenatal androgen exposure, but by social variables. Single males without a stable romantic partner had higher testosterone level than males with stable partners, and both males and females without a partner showed a greater cortisol response to the test than married individuals with or without children. Studies conducted with large sample sizes such as this one can help understand normative patterns of hormonal responses to psychosocial stimuli as well as identify the sources of interindividual variation in endocrine function.

Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone.

Women are generally more risk averse than men. We investigated whether between- and within-gender variation in financial risk aversion was accounted for by variation in salivary concentrations of testosterone and in markers of prenatal testosterone exposure in a sample of >500 MBA students. Higher levels of circulating testosterone were associated with lower risk aversion among women, but not among men. At comparably low concentrations of salivary testosterone, however, the gender difference in risk aversion disappeared, suggesting that testosterone has nonlinear effects on risk aversion regardless of gender. A similar relationship between risk aversion and testosterone was also found using markers of prenatal testosterone exposure. Finally, both testosterone levels and risk aversion predicted career choices after graduation: Individuals high in testosterone and low in risk aversion were more likely to choose risky careers in finance. These results suggest that testosterone has both organizational and activational effects on risk-sensitive financial decisions and long-term career choices.