Strategic Interactions and Gender Cues: Evidence from Social Preference Games

This paper studies trust, reciprocity, and bargaining using a large-scale online experiment conducted in six Latin American countries. Participants played trust and ultimatum games under randomly assigned conditions in which the gender of their counterpart was either disclosed or withheld. On average, disclosing counterpart gender does not yield statistically detectable effects in either game. However, statistically significant differences emerge by participants' own gender: on average, men exhibit higher levels of trust, reciprocity, and generosity in bargaining than women. When disaggregating by participant-counterpart gender pairings, point estimates differ in sign across groups but are generally imprecisely estimated, and differences between interacting with male versus female counterparts are generally not statistically distinguishable. Overall, the results are consistent with limited behavioral responses to counterpart gender when gender is conveyed through minimal, text-based cues, notwithstanding clear average gender differences.