A study by among others Associate Professor Jan Stoop (Erasmus School of Economics) reveals that racial and ethnic differences in key behavioural traits, such as competitiveness and risk tolerance, are just as large as the well-known gender gap that has shaped decades of economic and psychological research.
Behavioural differences go beyond gender
Drawing on a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. adults and incentivised behavioural experiments, the study finds that non-Hispanic Whites tend to be less competitive and more willing to take risks than Black and Hispanic participants. Strikingly, these racial and ethnic gaps rival the size of differences traditionally attributed to gender.
Gender patterns don’t hold across all groups
The research also uncovers a surprising twist: gender gaps in behaviour do not look the same across racial and ethnic groups. While White and Hispanic women are generally less competitive and more risk-averse than men in their groups (patterns long emphasised in behavioural science), Black women show no such difference compared to Black men.
‘These findings challenge some of the most widely accepted generalisations in behavioural research,’ Jan Stoop notes. ‘Much of what we think we know about gender differences is based on samples that are overwhelmingly White.’
A blind spot in behavioural science
For years, scholars have criticised behavioural science for relying on narrow “WEIRD” samples (western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic populations), often drawn from college students. While researchers have increasingly explored differences across countries, variation within the United States has remained largely overlooked, particularly along racial and ethnic lines.
The new study suggests that this oversight may have serious consequences for how findings are interpreted and applied, especially in policy contexts where behavioural insights are used to explain economic and social outcomes.
Why inclusion matters now
With more than 40% of the U.S. population now identifying as non-White, Jan Stoop and co-authors argue that ignoring racial and ethnic diversity risks systematically misrepresenting large segments of society.
‘Our results show that focusing almost exclusively on gender, while overlooking race and ethnicity, creates a blind spot in behavioural research comparable to relying on “WEIRD” samples in the first place,’ Stoop concludes.
- Associate professor
- More information
Read here the paper, titled: “The racial and ethnic gap in behavioral measures rivals the gender gap in the United States” by Aurelie Dariel, John C. Ham, Nikos Nikiforakis and Jan Stoop. For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media & Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, +31 6 53 641 846.
