Under the Shadow of the Future: Gender-Specific Reactions to (Un)certain Future Interactions

Abstract

Expectations are a key element of strategic environments, accordingly in all competitive situations. As it has already been shown that men's performance in current competitions is affected by the strength of expected future opponents, we investigate whether women are overshadowed by future competitors as well. In doing so, we use data from professional tennis, replicate the results for men and compare it with women's behavior. Extending previous research, we focus on individuals that have already entered a competition and investigate the role of uncertainty in this context, particularly, whether behavior differs and is gender-specific when individuals have to form expectations instead of having accurate information about future competitors. Our findings suggest that highly qualified men and women perform worse in current competitions in case that the expected future opponent is stronger. We find gender-specific behavior when analyzing uncertainty as a potential source of this effect: Women's current performance does not depend on the future competitor's strength when they know her for sure, whereas they are overshadowed when having to form expectations. In contrast, men are negatively affected by the future competitor's strength, both when they know him and when they need to form expectations, whereby the effect is weaker in the first case. Finally, our results suggest that women (men) rather seem to be sensitive to direct (more distant) incentives. These findings might be transferred to information revelation in promotion contests in order to help highly qualified individuals, especially women, climb the career ladder.