Gender, confidence, and the mismeasure of intelligence, competitiveness, and literacy
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Date
2026-01-30
Authors
Harrison, Glenn
Ross, Don
Swarthout, J. Todd
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Abstract
The measurement of intelligence should identify and measure an individual’s subjective confidence that a response to a test question is correct. Existing measures do not do that, nor do they use extrinsic financial incentive for truthful responses. We rectify both issues and show that each matters for the measurement of intelligence, particularly for women. Our results on gender and confidence in the face of risk have wider applications in terms of the measurement of “competitiveness” and financial literacy. Contrary to received literature, women are more intelligent than men, compete when they should in risky settings, and are more literate.
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© 2026 The University of Chicago. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits non-commercial reuse of the work with attribution. Rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies are reserved. Published by The University of Chicago Press.
Keywords
SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth , Competition , Confidence , Gender , Measurement of intelligence , Risk , Women , [SocietyPoliticsEthics]
Citation
Harrison, G, Ross, D & Swarthout, J T 2026, 'Gender, confidence, and the mismeasure of intelligence, competitiveness, and literacy', Journal of Political Economy, vol. 134, no. 2, pp. 665-730. https://doi.org/10.1086/738345
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