The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

192 Chapter 6

(Lundeberg et al., 2000). The nature of the

task may moderate these effects. In a study

that examined confidence and performance

in math, males were overconfident and fe-

males were underconfident (Lloyd, Walsh, &

Yailagh, 2005).

TAKE HOME POINTS

■ The major factor that influences sex differences in self-

confidence is the nature of the task. Sex differences

in self-confidence seem to be limited to masculine

tasks; it is here that women tend to underestimate

their performance and lack self-confidence. Thus, lack

of self-confidence could be a contributing factor to the

underrepresentation of women in masculine areas of

achievement, specifically math and science.

■ Part of the sex difference in self-confidence is due to

womenappearingless confident. Women are more re-

luctant than men to display confidence when they have

to men. But, do women underestimate their

abilities, or do men overestimate their abili-

ties? One way to address this question is to

compare women’s and men’s confidence to

their actual performance. If someone ex-

pects to receive a 90 on a test and receives an

80, the person is overconfident. If someone

expects to receive an 80 and receives a 90,

the person is underconfident. This kind of

method was used with college business stu-

dents who were asked to predict price/equity

ratios (Endres, Chowdhury, & Alam, 2008).

Men were more confident than women.

However, when confidence was compared to

accuracy, both men and women were found

to be underconfident. In this case, women

were more underconfident than men. By

contrast, a study that compared exam perfor-

mance to exam confidence across 25 univer-

sities that spanned five countries showed that

both women and men were overconfident

FIGURE 6.4 Among 2nd graders, girls believed that girls were

better than boys in math and boys believed boys and girls were

about the same; by 4th grade, boys believed that boys were better

than girls in math and this belief persisted through 5th grade; 3rd

and 4th grade girls thought the two sexes were roughly the same

but by 5th grade girls shared boys’ beliefs that boys were better

than girls at math.

Source: Adapted from Muzzatti and Agnoli (2007).

2nd

–0.6

–0.4

–0.2

Girls BetterThan Boys

Boys BetterThan Girls

0

0.2

0.8

3rd 4th 5th

0.4

0.6

Male

Female

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