IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/indrel/qt0tv798kj.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who is Willing to Sacrifice Sacred Values for Money and Social Status? Gender Differences in Reactions to Taboo Trade-offs

Author

Listed:
  • Kennedy, Jessica A.
  • Kray, Laura J.

Abstract

Women select into top business degree programs at a lower rate than men and are underrepresented in high-ranking positions in business organizations. We examined taboo trade-off aversion as one possible explanation for these patterns. In Study 1, we found that women implicitly associated business with immorality more than men did. In Study 2, when reading of decisions that compromised ethical values for social status and monetary gains, women reported feeling more moral outrage and perceived less business sense in the decisions than men. In Study 3, we established a causal relationship between taboo trade-off aversion and women’s disinterest in business careers by manipulating the presence of taboo trade-offs in job descriptions. As hypothesized, an interaction between gender and taboo trade-off presence emerged. Only when jobs involved making taboo trade-offs did women report less interest in the jobs than men. Women's moral reservations mediated these effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Kennedy, Jessica A. & Kray, Laura J., 2012. "Who is Willing to Sacrifice Sacred Values for Money and Social Status? Gender Differences in Reactions to Taboo Trade-offs," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt0tv798kj, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt0tv798kj
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0tv798kj.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jon Bakija & Adam Cole & Bradley Heim, 2008. "Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data," Department of Economics Working Papers 2010-22, Department of Economics, Williams College, revised Jan 2012.
    2. Dreber, Anna & Johannesson, Magnus, 2008. "Gender differences in deception," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 197-199, April.
    3. repec:cup:judgdm:v:3:y:2008:i::p:51-63 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    2. Abeler, Johannes & Becker, Anke & Falk, Armin, 2012. "Truth-Telling: A Representative Assessment," IZA Discussion Papers 6919, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Houser, Daniel & Vetter, Stefan & Winter, Joachim, 2012. "Fairness and cheating," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1645-1655.
    4. Gill, David & Prowse, Victoria & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2013. "Cheating in the workplace: An experimental study of the impact of bonuses and productivity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 120-134.
    5. Hamid Boustanifar & Everett Grant & Ariell Reshef, 2018. "Wages and Human Capital in Finance: International Evidence, 1970–2011 [Financial reform: what shakes it? What shapes it?]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(2), pages 699-745.
    6. Battiston, Pietro & Gamba, Simona & Rizzolli, Matteo & Rotondi, Valentina, 2021. "Lies have long legs cheating, peer scrutiny and loyalty in teams," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    7. Vranceanu, Radu & Dubart, Delphine, 2019. "Deceitful communication in a sender-receiver experiment: Does everyone have a price?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 43-52.
    8. Rosaz, Julie & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2012. "Lies and biased evaluation: A real-effort experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 537-549.
    9. Barabino, Benedetto & Salis, Sara & Useli, Bruno, 2015. "What are the determinants in making people free riders in proof-of-payment transit systems? Evidence from Italy," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 184-196.
    10. Simon Dato & Petra Nieken, 2020. "Gender differences in sabotage: the role of uncertainty and beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(2), pages 353-391, June.
    11. Kerim Peren Arin & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos & Deni Mazrekaj & Marcel Thum, 2021. "Misperceptions and Fake News during the Covid-19 Pandemic," CESifo Working Paper Series 9066, CESifo.
    12. Bertay, Ata Can & Uras, Burak R., 2020. "Leverage, bank employee compensation and institutions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    13. Barron, Kai & Stüber, Robert & Veldhuizen, Roel van, 2022. "Moral Motive Selection in the Lying-Dictator Game," Working Papers 2022:16, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    14. Gawn, Glynis & Innes, Robert, 2018. "Language and lies," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 167-176.
    15. Isabelle Brocas & Juan D. Carrillo, 2022. "The development of randomization and deceptive behavior in mixed strategy games," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), pages 825-862, May.
    16. Uyanga Turmunkh & Martijn J. van den Assem & Dennie van Dolder, 2019. "Malleable Lies: Communication and Cooperation in a High Stakes TV Game Show," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(10), pages 4795-4812, October.
    17. David W. Johnston & Wang-Sheng Lee, 2012. "Climbing the Job Ladder: New Evidence of Gender Inequity," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 129-151, January.
    18. Bucciol, Alessandro & Landini, Fabio & Piovesan, Marco, 2013. "Unethical behavior in the field: Demographic characteristics and beliefs of the cheater," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 248-257.
    19. Besancenot, Damien & Vranceanu, Radu, 2020. "Profession and deception: Experimental evidence on lying behavior among business and medical students," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 175-187.
    20. Dean Baker, 2017. "Financial Transactions Taxes: Potential Revenue and Economic Implications," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 60(2), pages 141-170, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business; gender; judgment and decision-making; ethics; morality;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt0tv798kj. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/irucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.