Broad claims about gender and behavior fall apart when studies include ethnically diverse samples

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence that racial and ethnic differences in certain behaviors are just as large as the widely known differences between men and women. The research suggests that generalizations about human behavior are often flawed because they rely on samples composed largely of White individuals. As a result, broad assumptions about how gender influences competitiveness and risk tolerance do not hold true across all demographic groups.

Scientists in the behavioral sciences frequently face criticism for relying on study participants who represent a very narrow slice of human experience. Historically, researchers have heavily recruited individuals who are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and from democratic societies (known as WEIRD samples). Because these samples largely consist of university students in North America and Western Europe, they do not reflect the global population, leading to a major gap in the scientific understanding of how behavior varies within a single country.

A significant body of behavioral economics literature examines how men and women differ in their willingness to take risks and compete, which helps economists explain differences in major life outcomes like career choices and overall income. However, these studies rarely report the racial and ethnic backgrounds of their participants. A review of leading economic journals from 2020 to 2024 revealed that only a minority of behavioral studies conducted in the United States reported the race or ethnicity of their subjects.

“Behavioral research over the past 15 years has focused extensively on comparing the behavior of men and women, using predominantly White samples, even within the United States. As a result, we know a great deal about gender gaps in competitiveness and risk tolerance, but much less about whether those patterns differ across racial and ethnic groups—or whether findings based largely on White samples generalize more broadly. We wanted to address that imbalance,” said corresponding author Nikos Nikiforakis, director of the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design and professor of economics at New York University Abu Dhabi.

To explore these behavioral differences, the scientists recruited a large sample of 2,468 adults in the United States between the ages of 25 and 54. They worked with an international research and analytics company to balance the sample equally across six specific groups. These distinct demographic groups included Black men, Black women, Hispanic men, Hispanic women, White men, and White women.

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The researchers used mathematical weighting techniques to ensure the participants in each group accurately reflected the broader national population. Specifically, they adjusted the data to mirror national averages regarding age, education level, and political orientation based on the 2016 presidential election.

“Methodologically, we invested heavily in sampling,” Nikiforakis said. “We collected a large, stratified sample of U.S. adults and ensured national representativeness within each race-ethnicity-gender group. If we want behavioral research to inform policy, representativeness within countries matters just as much as cross-country diversity.”

To measure competitiveness, the scientists asked participants to complete a timed task that involved counting the number of ones in a grid of numbers. For the first round, participants received a guaranteed payment for every correct answer they provided, which economists call a piece-rate scheme. In the second round, participants competed against a randomly selected opponent from the broader population. In this tournament-style setup, they only earned money if they successfully outperformed that person.

For the third round, participants had to choose which payment method they wanted to use again for the final task. If a participant actively chose the competitive, winner-takes-all payment method, the scientists classified them as competitive. To measure risk tolerance, the scientists used a standard psychological task involving financial lotteries.

Participants reviewed a menu of nine different lotteries that gradually increased in both the potential financial payoff and the level of risk involved. The least risky option offered a guaranteed, equal payout no matter what happened. By observing which lottery each participant selected, the scientists could precisely determine how comfortable they were with financial uncertainty.

The data suggests that race and ethnicity play a massive role in shaping these economic behaviors. Black and Hispanic participants chose the competitive payment method at very similar rates, at 56 percent and 58 percent respectively. White participants chose the competitive option only 47 percent of the time, making them significantly less competitive than both Black and Hispanic participants.

When it came to financial uncertainty, the scientists found a different pattern. The data provides evidence that White participants were about nine percent more willing to take risks than Black and Hispanic participants. These gaps remained consistent even after the researchers accounted for individual differences in income and education levels.

To understand the practical scale of these differences, the researchers compared them to the differences between men and women in the exact same sample. Across all demographic categories, men were 16 percent more likely to choose the competitive payment option and nearly 10 percent more tolerant of risk than women. This indicates that the behavioral gap between White individuals and Black or Hispanic individuals is roughly the exact same size as the overall behavioral gap between men and women.

“Racial and ethnic differences in competitiveness and risk tolerance in the U.S. are substantial — similar in size to the well-known gender gaps,” Nikiforakis told PsyPost.

For decades, scientists have considered the gender gap in risk and competitiveness to be incredibly meaningful in shaping economic and career outcomes. The researchers also found that the traditional gender gap does not actually look the same across all racial and ethnic groups. White and Hispanic men showed significantly higher levels of competitiveness and risk tolerance than White and Hispanic women.

Yet, this well-documented pattern did not appear among Black participants. The data provides evidence that Black women do not shy away from competition, nor are they any less willing to take financial risks than Black men. This suggests that the broad behavioral generalizations scientists have made about men and women for years are heavily skewed by predominantly White study samples.

“What stood out most was that the gender gap does not generalize across racial and ethnic groups,” Nikiforakis said. “In particular, we do not observe the typical gender gap in competitiveness or risk tolerance among Black participants. Given how robust the gender gap is often presented in the literature, that pattern was striking.”

While these findings offer a new perspective on human behavior, readers should be cautious about how they interpret the data. The scientists note that the legal and administrative categories used for race and ethnicity in the United States have conceptual limitations. These broad categories rely entirely on self-identification and group together people with vastly different cultural backgrounds and ancestries.

“A key caveat is that we use the same race and ethnicity categories employed by the U.S. Census,” Nikiforakis noted. “These categories are broad and group together people with diverse backgrounds. Also, we document differences — we do not make claims about their causes. The findings should not be read as essential or biological explanations, but as evidence that generalizations from narrow samples can be misleading.”

Future research will need to expand upon these findings by consistently including and reporting on diverse demographic groups. The scientists recommend that future experimental designs avoid relying strictly on convenient samples of university students. By moving away from predominantly White samples, researchers can build a much more accurate understanding of how human behavior impacts economic and social outcomes across all communities.

“We have a couple of follow-up studies that we will circulate soon,” Nikiforakis said. “The first examines how behavioral measures such as competitiveness and risk tolerance help account for racial, ethnic, and gender gaps in earnings in the United States. The second explores racial misperceptions about these behavioral differences and investigates where those misperceptions come from. More broadly, we hope this line of research encourages scholars to routinely examine racial and ethnic variation within countries, rather than assuming that findings based largely on White samples apply universally.”

The study, “The racial and ethnic gap in behavioral measures rivals the gender gap in the United States,” was authored by Aurélie Dariel, John C. Ham, Nikos Nikiforakis, and Jan Stoop.