Research

Abstract.  In order to succeed in the workplace, women are often encouraged to conform to masculine codes of conduct. Part of this advice rests on the assumption that changing the way individuals present themselves can shift the way they behave. This paper tests this assumption in a laboratory experiment using virtual reality to manipulate gendered self-representation. I find no evidence that embodying participants in male- or female-looking virtual bodies affects selection into competition. Instead, embodiment itself—regardless of whether the virtual body matches one’s sex—impairs women’s performance and reduces the extent to which they choose to compete, while leaving men unaffected. These findings suggest that attempts to manipulate self-representation may inadvertently reinforce the very gender gaps they aim to mitigate. 

Abstract: This review examines how virtual embodiment interventions can inform economic research on inequality across social groups. These interventions, now widely used in psychology and related disciplines, offer a novel tool to study processes such as discrimination and self-selection. I synthesize existing research on outgroup embodiment—across gender, race, age, and disability—and provide both a practical guide to designing embodiment interventions and a critical review of the methodological trade-offs involved in their implementation. Finally, I outline how combining embodiment interventions with tools from experimental economics can serve two purposes: first, to advance research on social inequality across these lines by introducing new methods to study its socio-cognitive foundations; and second, to address open questions in the embodiment literature by testing whether ``changing bodies" can change not only minds, but also behavior.

Abstract: This paper investigates the tragedy of ill-informed leadership in a setting where both leaders and followers lack certainty about the returns from a public good. In this context, leaders may unknowingly drive potential followers to form incorrect beliefs about the state of the world, ultimately leading them to make decisions that are to their disadvantage. Our experimental results show that leaders in such a setting remain influential and have long-lasting effects despite their lack of informational advantage. This influence takes a tragic turn when leaders receive misleading signals, as misinformed leaders end up unintentionally misleading followers. Specifically, having a misleading leader is associated with a reduction in gains from contributions approximately twice as large as the reduction from halving the return from the public good. Our results underscore the significance of having well-informed leaders. 

Abstract: Men tend to select into leadership positions more frequently than women. We conduct a lab experiment to examine how confidence contributes to this phenomenon. Our design allows us to measure several dimensions of confidence and correlate them with willingness to lead in different leadership contexts, while observing actual ability. For both men and women, we find that confidence explains willingness to lead to a larger extent when the leader’s role is to advise followers than when it is to take decisions on their behalf. This suggests that interventions aimed at boosting women's confidence might be more effective in increasing their representation in the former type of leadership roles.