Gender Differences in the Effect of Subjective Supervisory Feedback

Introduction: We estimate the effect of positive subjective feedback, in the form of encouragement and praise, on the perseverance and performance of individuals, and specifically, gender differences in these effects. Methods: We carry out our analysis using data gathered from an online game, in which players are randomly chosen to be given either no subjective feedback (control), or positive subjective feedback (treatment). We analyze the performance (score) of players, their perseverance and effort (number of games and clicks within a game) and their accuracy by feedback type, gender, and by self-reported task…