Competition, time pressure, public speaking and multitasking: The role of willingness and ability to cope with pressure in explaining individual differences and inequality in career outcomes

ended

Inequalities in study choices and career outcomes between population groups, including Inequalities in study choices and career outcomes between population groups, including differences across gender and socioeconomic background, are highly persistent. This hints at unobserved barriers that limit diversity and prevent people from selecting the careers they would be most productive in. As a society, this may keep us from having the best people in the most important positions. Our limited understanding of what drives individual differences in educational choices and labor market success prevents us from identifying such barriers. My project builds on an ongoing effort to incorporate insights from personality psychology into economics. Past research indicates that personality traits (and other non-cognitive traits) have high potential for explaining career choices and outcomes. I will introduce new measures for four promising traits, willingness to compete, ability to cope with time pressure, public speaking aversion and ability to multitask. Time pressure, competition, public speaking and multitasking are hallmarks of high-level careers and individual ability to cope with these pressures is therefore a plausible determinant of career outcomes. These traits vary strongly across individuals, as evidenced by studies that document differences across gender, socio-economic background and educational achievement levels. However, the potential of these traits for explaining individual differences in career choices is under-researched, in part because we do not yet know how to measure them properly in large samples. I will develop new measures for willingness to compete, ability to cope with time pressure, public speaking aversion and ability to multitask which can be implemented in large-scale survey panels. I will then collect large-scale data where these traits can be linked to a wide range of career outcomes to investigate how these traits shape individual careers.