Rolf Degen summarizing: If competition is framed as competition with oneself, rather than with other people, women are more competitive than men

Gender differences in interpersonal and intrapersonal competitive behavior. Jeffrey Carpenter, Rachel Frank, Emiliano Huet-Vaughn. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2018.10.003

Highlights
•    We ask if gender affects an individual’s willingness to compete against oneself
•    Our lab experiment randomly sorts subjects to compete against others or themselves
•    Women select intrapersonal competition more than interpersonal competition
•    Women select intrapersonal competition comparatively more than men
•    Perseverance or ”grit” does not predict competitive behavior
•    Men are more risk-seeking and this has some effect on the inclination to compete

Abstract: Gender differences in competitive behavior continue to be documented by econo-mists and other social scientists; however, the bulk of the research addresses competition with others and excludes other economically relevant contests. In this paper, we ask: how does gender affect how individuals react to competing against themselves? In a laboratory experiment in which some subjects compete against others and some compete against themselves, we find women select into intrapersonal competition at significantly higher rates than interpersonal competition and comparatively more than men. In addition, we find that while perseverance or “grit” does not explain the gender difference in behavior, risk attitudes have some explanatory power.