Do you folks recall the famous bar episode in the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’ – the blonde walks in, Nash faced with his eureka moment, states the only way to get lucky would be trying to do what’s best for himself and the group. None block each others way – ignore the blonde – go for her friends – everyone gets a fair chance. But if you are still single despite having such pub encounters, then possibly you are in a state of self doubt, frustrated with societal functionings and desperately wishing for a women to approach you. Let me be clear to you on this – they simply won’t! (even if they tend to like you)
Now, you might be wondering, how am I so certain about this?
Leave it to the social scientists, we are always there to answer all your pain and miseries. The first step would be to transform the problem into something easier to comprehend. The near perfect approximation could be studying the gender based risk preferences in a competitive or a non competitive scenario. According to core economics, risk is a disutility-providing entity and is generally disliked under normal circumstances. At the same time, one has to bear higher risk to enjoy higher reward (to get lucky, one has to get quite often rejected). The choices, one makes depend on the expected value of utility generated from those. In other words, you choose to act if your hope to succeed exceeds your fear of losing. Also hope and fear are reflections of your anticipation to win and lose and mathematically, our anticipations are a function of probabilities based on our prior experiences.
There has been multiple experimental studies highlighting the differences in risk preferences among genders, with women being more reluctant to take risks. From a psychological viewpoint, a study conducted by Byrnes, Miller, and Schafer (1999) clearly states women has risk averse preferences compared to men and adopt less risky strategies with prominent shifts in the size of the gender gap across successive age cohorts and the gender gap seems to be diminishing over time. If we dive deep into their experimental setup, we find conscious actions that lead to unwanted outcomes (like, prolonged use of alcohol or tobacco, unprotected sex, reckless driving) been treated as an indicator of risky choices. And, their claim on reducing gender gap over time is certainly evident in today’s ‘modern’ society. I always felt the urge of being ‘cool’ or the keen interest of showcasing the concept of ‘equality’ (for some) turned to be harsh reality at the later stages of life. On the other hand, economists did their experiments, devised questionnaires on hypothetical lotteries with underlying assumptions and concluded on women being quite reluctant to opt for risky financial decisions, one of them being Eriksson and Simpson (2010). There are more such studies in the literature, which discusses the practical implication of the risk averseness in women resulting in lower average salaries compared to the counterpart and one governing factor turns out to be women have been found to choose professions with less competition.
One particularly interesting study conducted by Gerdes and Gränsmark (2010) explored the risk capabilities of male and female expert chess players in a competitive scenario
The findings are noteworthy as they not only highlight the risk averseness of female players but also, males have been found to opt for more aggressive strategies when playing against female opponents, even though such strategies reduce their winning chances, unlike women.
Furthermore,
they have observed male players opt for significantly riskier strategies when playing against an attractive female opponent, even though this does not improve their performance whereas, women’s strategies are not affected by the attractiveness of the opponent.
It’s time to justify the phenomenon, and one possible explanation could be women’s propensity to experience emotions more intensely, leading to an overemphasis on the likelihood of failure and, consequently, increased risk aversion. As per evolutionary and socio-biological arguments, the interesting ones are the Darwinian fitness approach and the offspring risk hypothesis. The former argues that a male could potentially increase his Darwinian fitness by mating with multiple partners, whereas a female cannot due to higher cost of reproduction in them. While the later claims women to have a tendency to anticipate greater risks in order to the newborns. Females tend to be less competitive and less risky as they are presented with the task of childrearing and keeping dangers away from the vulnerable infants. In modern day scenario, these arguments might not make much sense but we mustn’t forget our brain is an evolved version of our primitive ancestors, our traits and behaviour are deep rooted in our ancient past.
Despite the title suggesting ‘Ignore the blonde,’ I’m confident that we, as men, can’t resist paying attention!
References –
Byrnes, James P, David C Miller, and William D Schafer (1999). “Gender dif- ferences in risk taking: A meta-analysis.” In: Psychological bulletin 125.3, p. 367.
Dreber, Anna, Christer Gerdes, and Patrik Gränsmark. “Beauty queens and battling knights: Risk taking and attractiveness in chess.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 90 (2013): 1-18.
Eriksson, Kimmo and Brent Simpson (2010). “Emotional reactions to losing explain gender differences in entering a risky lottery”. In: Judgment and Decision making 5.3, pp. 159–163.
Gerdes, Christer and Patrik Gränsmark (2010). “Strategic behavior across gen- der: A comparison of female and male expert chess players”. In: Labour Eco- nomics 17.5, pp. 766–775.
Harris, Christine R and Michael Jenkins (2006). “Gender differences in risk assessment: why do women take fewer risks than men?” In: Judgment and Decision making 1.1, pp. 48–63.