Date of Award
3-2021
Culminating Project Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Applied Economics: M.S.
Department
Economics
College
School of Public Affairs
First Advisor
Dr. Mana Komai Molle
Second Advisor
Dr. Patricia Hughes
Third Advisor
Dr. Susan Parault Dowds
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
Gender, Language style, Leadership, Performance
Abstract
I study the effect of two power categories, gender (male/female) and written communication style (strong language/weak language) on performance. To examine this relationship, these two attributes are considered in a request to perform a task using an experimental design on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Three variations of the experiment are performed: announcing an additional monetary reward for task performance, not announcing the reward, and explicitly warning that no reward is provided. I find significant differences in task performance caused by communication style such that weak language achieves 22.4 percent higher probability of task performance for male requesters while strong language has 11 percent more likelihood to achieve task performance for female requesters. Only the last experiment finds robust results and in two experiments no conclusions can be drawn due to the lack of variation in task performance. Omitted variable bias and lack of sample power might explain inconsistent results across experimental designs, and, while the lack of monetary reward in the third experiment does not allow for conclusions about task performance in hierarchical relationships, it does on the willingness of participants to perform a helpful act for the requester.
Recommended Citation
Plachejo, Alvaro, "To Perform or Not to Perform? Examining the Effects of Gender and Written Communication Style on Task Completion" (2021). Culminating Projects in Economics. 17.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/econ_etds/17
