Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess Revisited: Heterogeneity in a High Stakes Professional Setting

Multiple choice question tests are often the gateway to important professional outcomes. We study gender differences in willingness to guess among highly skilled and trained candidates, who take a high stakes multiple choice question test, before and after a reduction in the number of alternative answers to each question, which sets the penalty for incorrect answers at the critical value. We find heterogeneous gender differences. We replicate the previous finding that women answer fewer questions than men and find that the reduction in the number of alternative answers levels the field for men and women but only among those candidates that answer most of the questions.