Gender differences in motivated reasoning

Men and women systematically differ in their beliefs about performance relative to others; particular, men tend be more overconfident. This paper provides support for one explanation gender differences overconfidence, performance-motivated reasoning, which people distort how they process new information ways that make them believe outperformed others. Using a large online experiment, I find male subjects processing favor performance, while female do not either direction. These statistically-significant reasoning mimic overconfidence; of are overconfident, well-calibrated on average. The experiment also includes political questions, finds politically-motivated is similar both women. results suggest that, susceptible motivated general, it particularly attractive