Women perceived greater competitive tendencies in their fellow females when resources were plenty, rather than scarce

Bradshaw, H. K., Krems, J. A., & Hill, S. E. (2022). Resource availability differentially influences women’s perceptions of same- (versus cross-) sex others’ competitiveness. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Feb 2022. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000289

Abstract: Across four studies, the current research tested the prediction that women would perceive greater competitive tendencies in same- (vs. cross-) sex others when resources were scarce. Contrary to predictions, results found evidence that women perceived more competitive tendencies in same- (vs. cross-) sex targets when resources were abundant. Study 1 demonstrated that women (but not men) perceived greater competition within groups of female same-sex targets (vs. groups of male same-sex targets and groups of cross-sex targets) residing in ecologies where resources were widely available; no such pattern emerged when judging competition within groups residing in ecologies where resources were scarce. In Study 2, women (but not men) who held relatively low levels of resource scarcity beliefs (i.e., those who believed resources were relatively abundant) attributed greater competitive tendencies to same-sex targets than cross-sex targets. Study 3 showed that enacting a resource abundance (but not a scarcity) mindset led women to expect same-sex targets to behave more competitively toward them than cross-sex targets; this effect, however, did not replicate in Study 4. With the exception of Study 4, these data suggest that, contrary to intuition—and our predictions—women perceive same-sex others to be more competitive than cross-sex others when resources are abundant.

Do restaurant customers who receive an unreasonably low bill bring it to the server’s attention? A field experiment on dishonesty

Do restaurant customers who receive an unreasonably low bill bring it to the server’s attention? A field experiment on dishonesty. Yossef Tobol, Erez Siniver, Gideon Yaniv. Journal of Economic Psychology, February 4 2022, 102491. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2022.102491

Abstract: Inspired by Azar et al., 2013, Azar et al., 2015 study of customers’ tendency to return excessive change in a restaurant, the present paper reports the results of a field experiment destined to examine restaurant customers’ honesty in a different real-life situation where customers receive an unreasonably low bill. To ensure that customers noticed the error in the bill, the experiment was restricted to single customers who ordered two items only (e.g., coffee and a toasted sandwich), presenting them with a bill from which one item, either the more or the less expensive one, was omitted. A majority of customers (169 out of 278) failed to bring the error to the server’s attention. Several factors appeared to have a large effect on the decision of whether to report the bill error. Female customers reported the error in the bill much more often than male customers, customers whose more expensive item was omitted from the bill reported the error twice as often than customers whose less expensive item was omitted, repeated customers (presumably) reported the error much more often than one-time customers and customers who paid with a credit card reported the error much more often than customers who paid in cash. We also consider the possibility that the means of payment is a choice variable determined by the decision of whether or not to bring the error in the bill to the server’s attention.

Keywords: Field ExperimentRestaurant CustomersBill ErrorDishonest Behavior

Check also A field experiment on dishonesty: A registered replication of Azar et al. (2013). Jakub Prochلzka, Yulia Fedoseev, Petr Houdek. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, September 2020, 101617. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/09/replication-of-azar-et-al-2013-70-of.html