How Men and Women Respond to Failure:

Setbacks are inevitable in professional life, yet we know little about how people respond to them. I study how men and women respond to failure in a highly competitive setting, using 286,140 games from 3,523 titled chess players in a weekly tournament series. The weekly, 11-round structure and fixed player pool allow me to track both short- and long-term responses to losses. After a loss, men play less accurately, choose riskier openings, and are more likely to quit the tournament. In contrast, women maintain or improve their performance, showing greater resilience. Over the long run, however, men and women are equally likely to reenter tournaments and invest in skill development, conditional on past outcomes. These findings suggest that short-term emotional responses differ by gender, but longer-term competitive choices are primarily skill- and success-driven.

I study how chess players respond after losing a game, exploiting within-person variation in loss timing across tournaments. Outcomes include playing quality and choice of aggressive openings, presented below. My specifications control for player skill, opponent characteristics, piece color, age, and include player, round, and tournament fixed effects. 

Longer-Run Outcomes

(Between Tournament) 

I study how past tournament performance shapes longer-run engagement, including the time until players reenter competition and their online practice through blitz games. Using within-player variation, I examine gender differences in these responses while controlling for player skill, age, past performance, player and tournament fixed effects. Results below summarize tournament performance by placement quartile relative to the bottom quartile.