Detecting Group Gender Stereotypes : Opinion-mining vs. Incentivized Coordination Games

Individuals often make decisions based on perceived social norms and widely-held stereotypes. It is often difficult to elicit such beliefs, since subjects commonly give inaccurate or “politically correct” responses to subjective, sensitive topics. This paper compares two methodological procedures meant to identify group beliefs. In an experimental setting, I pair a flat-rate, opinion-mining scheme with an incentivized coordination game and compare their effectiveness in identifying the well-documented Math-Gender stereotype. Following a simple math task prime, those in the baseline overwhelmingly stated they individually believed neither sex is inherently more proficient at mathematics, while 72% of those in the incentivized treatment said that they believed “males are more proficient” would be the modal response. Gender nor age drives this focal outcome, however, political orientation appears to influence the perception of the stereotype. These results both document the usefulness of an incentivized coordination game as a research tool and demonstrate how stereotypes persist exist independent of whether or not they are individually held or stated