Concepts and Calculations: Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess

We present the results of a field experiment showing that gender differences in willingness to guess depend on the numerical or conceptual nature of the question for the same material/topic. When there is a penalty for incorrect answers, females are significantly more likely to skip questions that involve calculations, while they answer significantly more questions than males when they are asked to figure out the truthfulness of a concept. Differences in risk propensity help to explain the gender gap in numerical questions, and differences in confidence help to explain the gender gap in conceptual questions.