Influence gap
POSITIVE
Figure Effects of gender mislabeling on the influence gap in cross-gender conversations about the 2020 Democratic Primary Election. The influence gap measures the difference between the influence of the man and woman on the given measure. Positive values indicate that the man is more influential. Dots are point estimates of the gap with 90% and 95% confidence intervals. Stars indicate significant differences between mislabeled conversations (orange for mislabeled men or green for mislabeled women) and correctly labeled conversations (black) using two-tailed t-tests. One star indicates significance at the 5% level, two indicates significance at the 1% level. In correctly labeled conversations, men are more influential on all metrics—and significantly so for the aggregate index (The results for both treatment conditions are inconsistent with either the gender stereotypes or gender performance theories alone. Rather, when men are mislabeled as women (orange lines), men’s influence is reduced such that the influence gap changes direction, meaning that—relative to their male partners—women are on average the more influential partner when their male partners are misrepresented as women. Women’s influence likewise does not improve when they are misrepresented as men—if anything, women lose relative influence in those conversations compared to the control, but these differences are not statistically significant.These results indicate that, regardless of one’s actual gender, mislabeling someone’s gender reduces (or at least does nothing to improve) their level of political influence relative to their partner. This outcome is consistent with sociological explanations that predict negative effects when people’s actual behaviors contradict stereotyped expectations for how they should behave in a particular setting