Psychological Bulletin 1999, Vol. 125, No.

3, 367-383

Copyright 1999 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0033-2909/99/S3.00

Gender Differences in Risk Taking: A Meta-Analysis

James P. Byrnes, David C. Miller, and William D. Schafer University of Maryland
The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 150 studies in which the risk-taking tendencies of male and female participants were compared. Studies were coded with respect to type of task (e.g., self-reported behaviors vs. observed behaviors), task content (e.g., smoking vs. sex), and 5 age levels. Results showed that the average effects for 14 out of 16 types of risk taking were significantly larger than 0 (indicating greater risk taking in male participants) and that nearly half of the effects were greater than .20. However, certain topics (e.g., intellectual risk taking and physical skills) produced larger gender differences than others (e.g., smoking). In addition, the authors found that (a) there were significant shifts in the size of the gender gap between successive age levels, and (b) the gender gap seems to be growing smaller over time. The discussion focuses on the meaning of the results for theories of risk taking and the need for additional studies to clarify age trends.

Risk taking is an important form of human behavior that has been the subject of numerous investigations, scholarly analyses, and policy debates (Byrnes, 1998; Slovic, Lichtenstein, & Fischhoff, 1988). To a large extent, most researchers point to the association between risky behaviors (e.g., unprotected sex) and serious health problems (e.g., sexually transmitted diseases) when they provide reasons for studying the former (e.g., DiClemente, Hansen, & Ponton, 1995). However, others have also argued that risk taking should be studied because of its relevance to three important issues in the field of psychology: the adaptiveness of human behavior (Byrnes, 1998; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1993), the rationality of human thought (Baron, 1994), and the relative importance of genes versus the environment in determining the phenotypic expression of traits (Wilson & Daly, 1985; Zuckerman, 1991). In essence, then, researchers have examined risk taking for a variety of reasons. Correspondingly, the literature on risk taking is both vast and diverse. In the present article, we review that portion of the literature that is concerned with gender differences. From a scientific standpoint, gender differences are of interest because they can often precipitate important theoretical advances in a particular area of inquiry (Halpern, 1992). For example, the existence of gender differences on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) prompted many researchers to search for possible causes of this difference. One of the most important outcomes of this line of work was the finding that much of the variance in SAT scores can be explained by course work and math knowledge (e.g., Byrnes & Takahira, 1993). We hoped to precipitate similar advances in the field of risk taking. Our review is organized as follows. In the first section of this article, we discuss issues related to the definition and assessment of risk taking to provide an interpretive context for the rest of the

article. In the second section, we consider the relevance of gender differences for various theories of risk taking. In the third and fourth sections, we describe our meta-analytic methodology and the results of this analysis. In the final section, we interpret the findings and draw conclusions.

The Nature of Risk Taking: Definition and Assessment Issues

Researchers clearly differ in the definitions they provide for risk taking, but most refer to constructs such as goals, values, options, and outcomes (e.g., Byrnes, 1998; Furby & Beyth-Marom, 1992; Lopes, 1987; Slovic, Lichtenstein, & Fischhoff, 1988). Goals and values determine the kinds of outcomes that are pursued by an individual (e.g., good grades in school vs. being popular with friends) and also determine the kinds of options that are considered (e.g., studying vs. socializing). The act of implementing a goaldirected option qualifies as an instance of risk taking whenever two things are true: (a) the behavior in question could lead to more than one outcome and (b) some of these outcomes are undesirable or even dangerous (Furby & Beyth-Marom, 1992). In essence, then, risk taking involves the implementation of options that could lead to negative consequences. This somewhat standard definition implies that a wide range of behaviors would qualify as instances of risk taking (e.g., telling a joke, raising one's hand in class, smoking, having unprotected sex, etc.). To some researchers (including the present authors), the breadth of this definition is desirable because it is consistent with their belief in the pervasiveness of risk taking in daily life. In addition, it gives them the latitude to study risk taking in younger age groups (e.g., one cannot ask a minor to consume alcohol). To others, however, the definition may seem to be too broad because it lumps fairly innocuous behaviors (e.g., spinning a roulette wheel to win candy) together with rather dangerous ones (e.g., drunk driving). From an assessment standpoint, this split among researchers is problematic because it raises questions about the validity of certain measures of risk taking. One way to reconcile the two approaches is to suggest that the category of risky behaviors is not an equivalence class (Byrnes,
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James P. Byrnes and David C. Miller, Department of Human Development, University of Maryland; William D. Schafer, Department of Educational Measurement and Statistics, University of Maryland. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to James P. Byrnes, Department of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742. Electronic mail may be sent to JB119@umail.umd.edu.

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1998). In an equivalence class, any two members of the class are equally good examples of the category (e.g., the numbers 3 and 217 in the case of numbers). Clearly, actions that are likely to lead to distressing outcomes (e.g., reckless driving, unprotected sex) are generally thought to be more representative of the category of risky behaviors than actions that are significantly less likely to produce such outcomes (e.g., driving within the speed limit, protected sex) or actions in which seemingly trivial outcomes are at stake (e.g., voicing one's opinion, not carrying an umbrella on a cloudy day). Thus, one could say that researchers who prefer a more restrictive definition would admit only the prototypical cases into the category of risky behaviors. In contrast, those who prefer the less restrictive definition would admit both prototypical and less prototypical cases into the category. A second issue that would affect a researcher's judgment of validity is the distinction between an individual's subjective perception of risk and the perceptions of the larger community (Furby & Beyth-Marom, 1992). Consider the case of an unmarried adolescent girl who values pregnancy. Although many observers would argue that she has taken a risk when she engages in unprotected sex, the teenager might argue that she has not. Conversely, consider the case of an 8-year-old girl who does not want to lose a small amount of candy that she has won on early trials of a risk-taking game. Losing candy may seem trivial to an adult, but it may be very undesirable to the child. As a result, the task would be subjectively risky to the child but not very risky to adult onlookers. Some researchers have argued that subjective perceptions of risk constitute the minimum standard to be met in any study of risk taking. Others, however, seem to require higher and more objective standards (Slovic, 1964). Either way, the subjectivity criterion implies that people take risks only when they are aware of the fact that they are taking risks. However, there are many behaviors that seem to qualify as prototypical instances of risk taking that are performed out of naivete (e.g., unprotected sex in uninformed teens; a young child playing in the street; etc.). Thus, we agree with Furby and Beyth-Marom's (1992) suggestion that behaviors can be appropriately define'd as risky even when the person performing these actions is unaware of possible negative consequences. A third factor that affects judgments of validity is the relation between a person's skill level and risk taking. By definition, a highly skilled individual fails less often than an unskilled peer on tasks relevant to that skill. As a result, skill-related actions might only be risky for the latter. This analysis implies, therefore, that a researcher could not use the tendency to engage in skilled behaviors as the only evidence of risk taking in a particular study (Miller & Byrnes, 1997). As we indicate later, however, many researchers have done so. A fourth and final issue pertains to the contextualization of behaviors. Clearly, there are ways to perform an action and situations in which it is performed that make it more or less risky. For example, drinking a small amount of alcohol is less risky than drinking a large amount of alcohol. Similarly, having unprotected sex with a stranger is riskier than having unprotected sex with a spouse who has been tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Hence, responding "yes" to decontextualized questions regarding alcohol consumption and unprotected sex may or may not indicate risk taking.

Collectively, these four issues illustrate the problems associated with assessing someone's risk taking that have to be considered when the results of a study are interpreted. Note that these problems should not preclude the possibility of conducting a meaningful review because the standard of unquestioned validity is impossible to be fully met. That is, all measures of competence have been questioned at one time or another (e.g., IQ tests, achievement tests, etc.). Questions of validity do, however, affect the degree of concern generated by a particular set of findings. For obvious reasons, gender differences on a valid and widely accepted measure would tend to generate more concern than gender differences on an ambiguous or controversial measure. We return to the issues of measurement and validity when we describe our inclusion criteria and discuss the implications of our results. For now, it is important to point out an important implication of the foregoing analysis: Risk taking can either be adaptive or maladaptive. It is maladaptive whenever the benefits of some activity are far less likely to occur than the potential hazards. It is adaptive whenever the converse is true. In other words, people do not successfully adapt to their surroundings by avoiding all the risks they face. In fact, it would be impossible to do so. Instead, they successfully adapt by systematically pursuing certain risks while avoiding others (Baumrind, 1991; Byrnes, 1998). The study of gender differences, then, has the potential for demonstrating greater or lesser degrees of environmental adaptation in women versus men.

Theories and Expectations Regarding Gender Differences in Risk Taking

Theories are often judged to be adequate to the extent that they can explain similarities or differences in performance among various groups (e.g., male vs. female participants, younger vs. older students, experimental vs. control groups). All things being equal, a theory that can explain gender differences is more adequate than a theory that cannot. Our reading of the risk-taking literature reveals that researchers have not been particularly interested in explaining or uncovering gender differences using the most widely cited theoretical models of risk taking. Instead, they have tended to examine gender differences in an ancillary manner (presumably because it would prove interesting to the reader). Nevertheless, it is useful to briefly consider the types of results that would be more or less consistent with particular types of theoretical approaches. At a general level, theories of risk taking fall into one of three categories (Lopes, 1987). The first category consists of theories that are equipped to explain the differences between people who regularly take risks and people who regularly avoid risks. Two examples of such theories are Zuckerman's (1991) account of the sensation-seeking personality and the "Risk as Value" hypothesis as described by Kelling, Zirkes, and Myerowitz (1976). Here, a single factor such as (a) a naturally lower level of arousal in men or (b) a socially instilled belief that risk taking is a highly valued masculine tendency motivates high levels of risk taking across contexts in men. In their simplest form, such theories predict that the size and direction of gender differences would not vary by context (i.e., men would always take more risks than women and the gap would remain relatively the same across contexts). Moreover, one need not be concerned about the type of task used because most risk-taking tasks would probably tap into this ten-

RISK TAKING dency. In more elaborated forms of these theories, however, a greater degree of context specificity might be predicted (e.g., see Arnett's model below). The second category consists of theories that are equipped to explain the differences between situations that promote risk taking (in most people) and situations that promote risk aversion. An example would be Kahneman and Tversky's (1979) prospect theory. Prospect theory was designed, in part, to account for the fact that most people seem to prefer a risky option over a sure thing when the choices are framed in a positive way (e.g., the number of people who would be saved by a medication), but they shift their preferences when the same choices are framed in a negative way (e.g., the number who would not be saved). There are, of course, participants in each study of framing who fail to demonstrate this shift, but prospect theory was not designed to account for such individual differences (Lopes, 1987). As such, situation-based theories would have to predict a constant effect size of d = 0 across contexts (i.e., no gender differences). The third category consists of theories that are equipped to explain differences among people and situations that promote risk taking. In other words, these models could explain why only certain people take risks in certain situations. To illustrate, consider multifactor models that include expectations and values in their formulation. According to these models, people take risks in a particular context because they (a) believe they will be successful and (b) value success in that context (Atkinson, 1983; Byrnes, 1998; Irwin & Millstein, 1991; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992). As people move from one context to another, however, they generally hold different expectations and values. As a result, these models suggest that gender differences would vary by context and that some contexts would promote greater risk taking on the part of women. For example, if there was reason to believe that women might feel more confident in a particular situation than men, and it mattered more to women to be successful in that situation (e.g., volunteering to coordinate a crucial fundraiser for their children's school), expectancy-value models would support an expectation of greater risk taking on the part of women. Other multifactor models also support the idea of context specificity, but for other reasons. For example, Arnett's (1992) theory of broad and narrow socialization suggests that the level of risk taking manifested by an individual depends on two factors: (a) endogenous tendencies such as sensation seeking and (b) the restrictions placed on risk taking by the individual's culture (e.g., laws, norms, parenting practices, etc.). Whereas cultural restrictions dampen a sensation seeker's tendency to take risks, these restrictions do not entirely eliminate the tendency. As such, Arnett's model leads to the prediction that men would take more risks than women in most cultures (because sensation seeking is found more often in men than women). However, the size of the gender gap would vary as a function of a culture's restrictiveness and the norms for appropriate gender role behaviors. Our reading of Arnett's model is that it would not necessarily predict negative effect sizes (i.e., more risk taking in women, using the conventional approach of subtracting the female mean from the male mean), but given the fact that some sensation seekers are women, negative effect sizes would not be out of the question. In the same way, Wilson and Daly's (1985) sociobiological model suggests that gender differences would not be found for all contexts, but that it would be men who take more risks when

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gender differences do occur. These authors have argued that risk taking is an "attribute of the masculine psychology" (p. 66) that evolved in response to the competitive demands of primate societies. According to this view, competition forces dominant individuals to engage in risk taking to gain their positions of power. The greater the spread in rewards between winners and losers, the greater the incentive to take risks. This account suggests that men would only be more likely to take risks than women when a context involves both competition and a large spread in rewards between winners and losers. For all other contexts, the gap would presumably be smaller (though Wilson and Daly do not explicitly make this claim). Moreover, their account provides little room for the possibility of greater risk taking on the part of women. One could, however, construct a different sociobiological model to explain risky behaviors that are clearly more common in women than in men (e.g., binge eating). So, the existence of negative effect sizes is more of a problem for Wilson and Daly's model than for sociobiological models generally. In sum, then, there are three primary patterns of gender differences that would be more or less consistent with the claims of particular theories of risk taking. For Pattern 1, effect sizes would show a constant gender difference across contexts favoring men. Pattern 2 would consist of varying gender differences across contexts, but the distribution of effect sizes would include only zeros and positive values (i.e., it would be men who take more risks when gender differences occur). Pattern 3 would be a distribution of effect sizes that includes a full range of values (i.e., negatives, positives, and zeros). In addition to considering the issue of context specificity, we also considered whether the size of the gender gap would change with age. In so doing, we hoped to narrow the field of plausible theories even further (beyond that suggested by the findings for context specificity). Note that relatively few theories of risk taking could explain a pattern in which the gender gap increases monotonically from d = 0 in young children to d = .40 in young adults. Similarly, relatively few theories could explain a pattern in which the gender gap increases between childhood and adolescence (e.g., d = 0 to d = .20), and then decreases between adolescence and adulthood (e.g., d = .20 to d = 0). In the final section of this article, we describe the extent to which existing theories of risk taking are consistent with the age trends that we reveal. For now, we move on to a consideration of our meta-analytic techniques.

Method Overview
A total of 150 studies were retrieved in five steps. The first step involved an extensive computerized search of the PsycLIT and PsycINFO databases to find empirical studies in which the researchers examined gender differences in risk taking. Within this search, we crossed the keywords risk and risk taking with the keywords gender differences and sex differences using the Boolean operator AND. Such an approach retrieved all articles published between 1967 and 1994 that contained both of the crossed keywords somewhere in the title, abstract, or subject identifier list. However, only 49 of these articles involved a direct comparison of men and women (or boys and girls) on some risk-taking measure. The rest were of four types: (a) policy-oriented commentaries, (b) studies in which men and women were analyzed separately (no means were reported), (c) studies of risk perceptions, and (d) articles on the risk factors for various diseases (e.g., heart

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BYRNES, MILLER, AND SCHAFER In total, then, we ended up analyzing data from 150 (40%) of the 374 publications that we retrieved and read. The remaining 224 (60%) publications investigated risk taking but did not provide data on gender differences. There were 135 published studies and 15 dissertations in the final database. Collectively, these studies comprised a total N of over 100,000 participants. In most studies, more than one gender comparison was made. As a result, we were able to compute a total of 322 effects (M = 2.15 effects per study). When a large number of comparisons were made in a given study and all comparisons involved the same content (e.g., gender differences in smoking rates for 22 countries), a single average effect size was computed for that study. Effects were not averaged in a study when they pertained to different contents (e.g., smoking rates and drinking rates). For each gender comparison, we primarily computed Cohen's d in one of two ways: (a) directly from the means and standard deviations if they were provided or (b) indirectly, by converting parametric statistics (e.g., F or t) or chi-square statistics using standard conversion formulas (e.g., Rosenthal, 1994). Once computed, each d was corrected for bias and weighted according to the inverse of its variance using the approaches described by Hedges (1994) and Hedges and OUan (1985). In 9% of the cases (i.e., 30 effects), d had to be estimated from a probability level (e.g., p < .05) or assigned to a value of zero if the authors merely reported that no significant difference was observed.

disease). Note that we included all empirical articles that were characterized by their authors as involving risk taking (using either the broad or narrow definitions that we discussed earlier). We did so for two reasons. First, we favor the broad definition because we believe that risk taking extends beyond the class of prototypical behaviors. Second, including both types of risk taking allowed us to provide useful information to researchers in both camps (e.g., average effect sizes for both prototypical and less prototypical types of risk taking). During the second step, we conducted another search on an updated and greatly expanded version of PsycINFO that became available to us shortly after the first step had been completed. The new version used a relevancebased approach that can be used instead of a Boolean approach. In the relevance-based approach, articles that contained both keywords (e.g., risk taking and gender differences) were given higher ranks than articles that contained only one of these terms. However, articles with only one term (e.g., just risk taking) were not excluded as they would be in a Boolean approach. Two new searches were conducted using the relevance method: one in which the terms risk taking and gender differences were crossed, and another in which the terms risk taking and sex differences were crossed. Each of these searches generated a rank-ordered list of 250 articles published between 1967 and 1997 that contained the original 49 articles plus many others (note: the system limited searches to 250 of the highest ranked articles). The titles and abstracts of all 500 of these articles were scanned to limit the selection to just those that were empirical studies. This process yielded 66 articles that mentioned gender comparisons in their abstracts and another 125 studies on risk taking that failed to indicate whether gender comparisons were made. All 191 of these articles were retrieved and read in the event that the latter examined gender differences but failed to mention this fact in their abstracts. It turned out, however, that only the articles that mentioned gender differences in the abstract actually made gender comparisons. In the third step, we conducted a search using the names of the authors who were found during the first two steps. This was done because we found that PsycINFO occasionally did not always place similar articles in the same category. In addition, we searched the MEDLINE system to discover epidemiological and other studies not indexed by PsycINFO. In each case, the searches included articles that had dates ranging from 1967 to 1997. The net result of the second and third steps was that 78 additional articles were added to the 49 that were identified in the first step. During the fourth step, we entered the terms associated with specific types of risky choices such as smoking, driving, and framing effects. In the case of framing, we located 103 studies conducted after 1981 (when Kahneman and Tversky originally identified the phenomenon). Although none of these studies mentioned gender differences in their abstracts, we retrieved them anyway and found that 8 had conducted analyses of gender differences. The effects from the latter 8 studies were added to the database. Our search of other specific types of risk taking failed to locate additional studies that involved gender comparisons. In the fifth and final step, we conducted a computerized search of Dissertation Abstracts. This system, which only allows a Boolean approach of dissertations conducted after 1979, generated a list of 23 dissertations that examined gender differences in risk taking. All 23 were requested through the interlibrary loan services of our university, but only 15 were sent by their home institutions. Recall that a Boolean search only retrieves studies in which all of the requested terms are present in the titles or abstracts. Given our primary interest in issues of context specificity and age trends, we did not request additional dissertations to check for the possibility that some authors analyzed gender differences but failed to indicate this fact in their abstracts. We leave that task to the interested reader. For now, it is sufficient to note that the means that we report for dissertations could be somewhat biased (i.e., probably too high given our experience with journal articles in which the nonreported comparisons tended to yield very small effects).

Coding Studies According to Task and Content

After the studies were retrieved, they were coded primarily according to the type of task used by the researchers. Three types of tasks were identified. In the first type (hypothetical choice), participants were asked to choose between two imaginary options (e.g., two fictitious gambles) or choose a level of risk that they would tolerate in a hypothetical situation (e.g., take a risk if they were 70% sure that things would work out). Participants were not asked in these studies if they ever engaged in the behaviors described. In addition, they did not have to experience the consequences of their choices. Hypothetical choice tasks (coded 1) were used in 23% of the published studies (n = 31) and 53% of the dissertations (n = 8). In the second type (self-reported behavior), participants reported how often they engaged in various risky behaviors (e.g., used drugs or had unprotected sex). A sample item would be, "In the last 12 months, have you had sex without a condom?" Hence, whereas hypothetical choice tasks involved questions of the form "How would you behave in this situation?" self-report tasks involved questions of the form "How have you behaved in this situation?" Self-report tasks (coded 2) were used in 45% of the published studies (n = 61) and 33% of the dissertations (n = 5). In the third type (observed behavior), participants were observed by researchers as they engaged in various activities that were judged by the researchers to have some degree of risk (e.g., making a left turn in front of oncoming traffic). Observed behavior tasks (coded 3) were used in 33% of the published studies (n = 45) and 20% of the dissertations (n = 3). After studies were coded with respect to the type of task used, they were next coded according to the content of the task. We created a content category within a particular task category if at least 10% of the effect sizes pertained to that content. Contents that were composed of less than 10% of the effect sizes for a given task were placed into an other category. For hypothetical choice studies, three content categories emerged: choice dilemma tasks (Kogan & Wallach, 1964), framing tasks (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981), and other. Choice dilemma tasks (coded 1) consist of presenting participants with 12 scenarios (e.g., a man who is thinking about a risky medical procedure; a woman thinking about her career options; etc.). After being given a certain amount of information about several options, participants are asked to state the minimum level of uncertainty that they would accept before the main character should choose the riskiest option. An example item (from Kogan & Wallach, 1964, p. 257) is the following:

RISK TAKING Mr. B., a 45-year-old accountant, has recently been informed by his physician that he has developed a severe heart ailment. The disease would be sufficiently serious to force Mr. B. to change many of his strongest life habitsreducing his work load, drastically changing his diet, giving up his favorite leisure-time pursuits. The physician suggests that a delicate medical operation could be attempted which, if successful, would completely relieve the heart condition. But its success could not be assured, and in fact, the operation might prove fatal. Imagine that you are advising Mr. B. Listed below are several probabilities or odds that the operation will prove successful. Please check the lowest probability that you would consider acceptable for the operation to be performed: Place a check here if you think Mr. B should not have the operation no matter what the probability. The chances are 9 in 10 that the operation will be a success. The chances are 7 in 10 that the operation will be a success. The chances are 5 in 10 that the operation will be a success. The chances are 3 in 10 that the operation will be a success. The chances are 1 in 10 that the operation will be a success. On this task, any respondent who consistently selects low probabilities across the 12 scenarios (e.g., 3 in 10) is said to have a preference for risk taking. In contrast, the tendency to choose the highest odds of success (e.g., 9 in 10) across the scenarios is taken to indicate a high level of conservatism. In a sense, then, the 12-item questionnaire that contains these scenarios (i.e., the Choice Dilemma Questionnaire or CDQ) is comparable to personality questionnaires in its assumption that risk taking is a trait-like disposition that would be expressed across many contexts. The CDQ was used in 18 (46%) of the studies that used a hypothetical choice task. On framing tasks (coded 2), participants are also presented with a hypothetical scenario such as the following from Tversky and Kahneman (1981): Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the program are as follows: If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If Program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 will be saved and a 2/3 probability that no people will be saved. Which of the two programs do you favor? (p. 453) Half of the participants received the wording above, and half received a version in which the first three lines were the same but the two options were stated as follows: "If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die. If Program D is adopted there is a 1/3 probability that nobody would die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die." Note that Option A is identical to Option C, and Option B is identical to Option D. Within each of the two frames, there is a "sure thing" (e.g., Program A) contrasted with a risky option (e.g., Program B). The primary indication of risk taking on framing tasks is the selection of the risky option. The tendency to choose the sure thing in the first frame is so pervasive that it has been taken to indicate a basic aversion to risk taking in adults (Lopes, 1987). Framing tasks were used in 28% of the hypothetical choice studies. The other category (coded 3) for hypothetical choice tasks contained the remaining 26% of measures that did not fit either the choice dilemma category or framing category. In all cases, participants were presented with a scenario and shown two or more ways one could behave in that scenario. Some of the scenarios included (a) making friends in a new neighborhood (Miller & Byrnes, 1997), (b) walking home from the woods (Morrongiello & Bradley, 1997), (c) solving math problems (Foersterling, 1980), (d) donating an organ to a sick child (Lampert & Yassour, 1992), and (d) planting different types of crops (Wilson, Daly, Gordon, & Pratt, 1996).

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The riskiest options always entailed the possibility of negative consequences (e.g., being rejected in the case of making new friends, etc.) For self-reported behavior studies, five content categories emerged: drinking and drugs (coded 1), driving (coded 2), sexual activities (coded 3), smoking (coded 4), and other (coded 5). As noted earlier, risk taking was assessed by asking participants if they ever (or frequently) engaged in such behaviors. Example items for the first four categories included (a) "Have you ever smoked marijuana?"; (b) "Have you ever driven 20 miles per hour above the speed limit?"; (c) "Have you ever had sex without a condom?"; and (d) "Do you currently smoke cigarettes?" The other category included items that referred to behaviors such as vandalism, boating in a storm, and hitchhiking. Too few items focused on the latter topics to warrant the creation of additional categories. Some studies examined a single type of behavior (e.g., use of condoms), whereas others examined a number of the aforementioned behaviors using multi-item instruments that have undergone reliability and validity assessments (e.g., Eysenck & Eysenck's, 1977, Personality Questionnaire). In general, then, the self-reported-behavior category mainly refers to behaviors that are either physically dangerous or illegal. For observed behavior studies, eight content categories emerged. The category of informed guessing (coded 1) included tasks in which participants could earn points or money for correct guesses but could also lose points or money for incorrect guesses (e.g., standardized achievement tests that have penalties for incorrect guesses). The category of physical activity (coded 2) included behaviors such as the following: climbing a steep embankment, playing in the street, trying out gymnastics equipment (e.g., a balance beam), and taking a ride on an animal (e.g., a donkey). In essence, the actions were risky because of the possibility of physical harm. The category of driving (coded 3) included actions such as making a left turn in front of oncoming traffic, gliding through a stop sign rather than coming to a complete stop, and engaging in simulated driving tasks on a computer. For the real-life driving behaviors, the risks include damage to one's vehicle, physical injury, and traffic tickets. The category of physical skills (coded 4) included such things as playing shuffleboard and tossing rings onto pegs. In most cases, options differed in terms of their probability of success (i.e., high, medium, and low) and the number of points that could be won or lost (i.e., winning more points for success but losing more points for failure on high-risk options). The category of gambling tasks (coded 5) was similar to the category of physical skills in terms of the varied risk/reward options. However, gambling tasks differed in the sense that a person's skill level had no bearing on the likelihood of success. Examples included spinning a roulette wheel and pulling cards from a deck. The category of risky experiments (coded 6) involved an individual's willingness to participate in an experiment that was described to them as involving the chance of physical or psychological harm. The category of intellectual risk taking (coded 7) involved tasks that required mathematical or spatial reasoning skills. Participants were presented with items of various levels of difficulty and asked to indicate their preferred level of choice. Unlike the tasks in the informed-guessing category, points were not subtracted for incorrect answers on the intellectual tasks. Thus, participants were mainly concerned about getting stuck on items or exposing their lack of skill when they fail. The final category of other (coded 8) included the following behaviors that did not fit the other seven categories: entrepreneurial activities in a simulated classroom economy, lying about finding someone else's money, cheating during a computerized game, playing a game alone instead of teaming up, and administering an electric shock to a confederate to increase his learning rate. Given our earlier arguments regarding the need to take into account factors such as context and skill levels when risk-taking competence is assessed, we refined our coding of tasks in one additional way. In some studies, participants pursued courses of action that were clearly not the best way to proceed (i.e., they had better options available). In other studies, however, the measures of risk taking were more ambiguous. In other words, one could not definitely say whether engaging in the risky action

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was a good idea or not. Two judges rated the ambiguity of the measures used in the 150 studies and agreed 93% of the time. Differences were resolved by discussion. The unambiguous measures (coded 1, n = 145 effects) included such things as unprotected sex with a stranger, regular consumption of alcohol by a minor, drug use by a minor, smoking, speeding, drunk driving, criminal activities, and laboratory tasks that involved controls for skill level and probabilities of payoffs. The ambiguous measures (coded 2, n = 111 effects) included choice dilemma tasks, framing tasks, making a left turn in front of traffic, trying alcohol once, guessing on an objective examination, intellectual risk taking, entreprenurial activities in a simulated classroom economy, lying about finding money, and laboratory tasks that did not control for skill level or probabilities of payoff.

Additional Codes
In addition to coding studies in terms of task and content, we coded them according to the age of the participants using the following scheme: (a) below age 9, (b) ages 10-13, (c) ages 14-17 (high-school level), (d) ages 18-21 (college level), and (e) ages 22 and older (noncollege adult). Studies were also coded with respect to their year of publication (i.e., 1964-1980 vs. 1980-1997) and publication type (e.g., dissertation vs. journal article). Table 1 provides the entire corpus of 150 studies that were used in the meta-analysis. As can be seen, we provide all effect sizes generated by a given study as well as the corresponding codes for task, content, and age (in parentheses). We used the convention that positive effect sizes corresponded to greater risk taking on the part of males. For hypothetical choice studies, then, a positive effect size means that male participants were more likely than female participants to choose the risky option presented in the scenarios or accept a lower level of odds across scenarios. For self-report studies, it means that male participants were more likely to say that they had engaged in behaviors such as reckless driving or unprotected sex. For observation studies, it means that experimenters saw male participants engaging in risky behaviors more often than female participants.

we excluded the 12 effects that were estimated to be zero and found the identical mean of d = .13. Hence, it cannot be said that the estimated effects artificially deflated the overall mean. Next, we generated a histogram for the original 322 scores (including the estimated effects) to consider the extent to which the distribution deviated from the characteristic shape of a normal distribution. Because we searched for articles using general terms (e.g., risk taking) and specific terms (e.g., framing), we were concerned that there may be too many articles of one type that yielded too many values in a given region (causing a spike). Inspection of the histogram showed that the distribution had the characteristic normal shape in all regions except for the region corresponding to values near zero. We trimmed 20 effects from that region (i.e., the 12 effects estimated to be zero and 8 others selected at random) to create a more proportionate array. The resultant distribution generated a slightly higher mean of d = .14, but note that this value is still within the original 95% confidence interval of .12 to .14. In the third analysis, we examined the possibility that the mean was unduly influenced by extreme scores. Here, we excluded all effects whose values fell two standard deviations above or below the mean (n = 30 effects). The resultant distribution for the remaining 292 effects generated a mean of d = .13, so outliers did not appear to be biasing the mean in a particular direction. Overall, then, the original mean ofd= .13 appears to be a reliable estimate of the population value.

Partitioning Effects Into Homogeneous Subgroups

Task, content, and age effects. Homogeneity analyses revealed that there was significant heterogeneity around the grand mean of d = .13, ^(313) = 2457.83, p < .00001. As a result, we conducted several additional analyses to partition the studies into more homogeneous subgroups using the factors of task, content, and age. In the first analysis, we found that there was significant variation associated with the task factor, ^(l) = 10.85, p < .01. The means and confidence intervals for the three types of tasks were (a) hypothetical choice, d = .15 (.12 to .18); (b) self-reported behavior, d = .12 (.11 to .13); and (c) observed behavior, d = .19 (.16 to .22). Using the method of nonoverlapping confidence intervals (Schafer, in press), we found that these results suggest that the only significant contrast is between the means for self-reported behavior and observed behavior. All three of the task means differed significantly from zero (smallest x2 = 65.79, p < .001). Further analyses revealed significant heterogeneity around each of the task means as well. As a result, we attempted to create more homogeneous subgroups with each task using the factor of content. The means and confidence intervals for various contents are shown in Table 2. As can be seen, different contents produced different means within each task. For hypothetical choice tasks, for example, two levels of gender differences are evident. The first level contains the relatively small gender differences generated by choice dilemma (d = .07) and framing tasks (d = .05). The means for these two tasks did not differ significantly, and only the mean for choice dilemma tasks was significantly greater than zero. The second level consists of tasks that did not fit choice dilemma or framing categories. The mean for this other category (d = .35) differed significantly from the means for choice dilemma and

Results
In what follows, we first describe the distribution of effects that emerged from our meta-analysis, and then we consider whether the size of the gender gap varied according to age, task, content, year of publication, and publication type.

Distribution of Effect Sizes

For descriptive purposes, it is useful to begin by subdividing the distribution of effect sizes into successive intervals that capture 20% of the scores (i.e., quintiles). The interval corresponding to the first quintile was found to be 1.23 to .09 (indicating greater risk taking on the part of female participants). The interval for the second quintile was -.08 to .07 (indicating essentially no difference). The intervals for the third, fourth, and fifth quintiles were .08 to .27, .28 to .49, and .50 to 1.45, respectively (all indicating greater risk taking on the part of male participants). Thus, the majority (i.e., 60%) of the effects support the idea of greater risk taking on the part of males. In fact, nearly half (48%) were larger than .20 (the conventional cutoff point for small effects). However, a sizable minority (i.e., 40%) were either negative or close to zero. Across all 322 effects, the weighted mean was found to be d = .13, with a 95% confidence interval of .12 to .14. This figure is significantly larger than zero, ^(l) = 659.02, p < .00001. To check for the possibility that certain effects had an undue influence on the overall mean, we conducted three additional analyses. First,

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373

framing tasks. Recall that the scenarios in the other category asked participants how they would behave in situations that involved such things as making friends in a new neighborhood, walking home from the woods, solving math problems, donating an organ to a sick child, and planting different types of crops. For self-reported behavior, three levels of gender differences can be observed. The first level is composed of the mean for smoking (d = .02), which was significantly smaller than all other means. The next level consists of the means for drinking and drug use (d = .04) and sexual activities (d = .07). The third level consists of the means for driving (d = .29) and other (d = .38). The latter two means were significantly larger than the means for sexual activities and drinking and drug use. Earlier, we noted that the other category included multi-item scales that referred to most of the contents listed under self-reported behaviors (e.g., items for drinking, smoking, and reckless driving, all on the same scale). Individuals who engage in more than one of these behaviors would get higher scores than individuals who engage in few of these activities. The other category also included scores from ambiguous single items with general wording (e.g., "I often take risks"), as well as items addressing such things as shoplifting, vandalism, career changes, and dangerous activities for young children (e.g., running into the street, standing on chairs, etc.). For observed behaviors, distinct levels of gender differences failed to emerge because most confidence intervals overlapped to a certain extent. Nevertheless, there are seven contrasts in Table 2 that correspond to significant mean differences. In brief, these contrasts amount to the differences between two of the largest means (i.e., physical skills and intellectual risk taking) and three of the four smallest means (i.e., physical activity, driving, and informed guessing). In addition, the difference between physical skills and other was also significant. The other category included the following behaviors: lying about finding a lost coin, teacher ratings of entrepreneurial activities in a simulated economy, competing against two individuals in a coalition game, cheating to earn points, providing an electric shock to a confederate to produce faster learning of a rule, and choosing a person to date from a set of pictures. As for age effects, heterogeneity analyses revealed considerable variation in the size of d for the different age groups, ^(4) = 34.69, p < .001. The weighted means and 95% confidence intervals (in parentheses) for these groups were as follows: (a) ages 3 to 9, d = .19 (.14 to .24); (b) ages 10 to 13, d = .26 (.21 to .31); (c) ages 14 to 17, d = .11 (.09 to .13); (d) ages 18 to 21, d = .24 (.22 to .26); and (e) older than 21, d = .05 (.03 to .07). Using the method of nonoverlapping confidence intervals, we found that the gender gap for the oldest age group is significantly smaller than the gender gap for high-school students, which, in turn, is significantly smaller than the gaps for children, preadolescents, and college students. The means for these latter three groups do not differ. Moreover, as indicated by the fact that none of the confidence intervals include zero, all of the means differed significantly from zero (smallest x2 = 34.16, p < .001). Considered as a whole, then, the results for age factor revealed the following wave-like pattern in the relative size of the gender gap: Level 1 to Level 2, no change; Level 2 to Level 3, significant decrease;

Level 3 to Level 4, significant increase; Level 4 to Level 5, significant decrease. However, it is possible that this wave-like pattern simply reflects a confounding of age and content. Note that children under 10 were not asked about their driving or sexual practices. Similarly, participants older than 10 were not asked if they would like to play on exercise equipment, and so on. Overall, 64% of the possible combinations of age, content, and task emerged in our database (see Table 3). To consider whether the age trends simply reflect content effects, we conducted a weighted least squares regression analysis as suggested by Hedges and Olkin (1985, pp. 173-174). More specifically, we first separated the effects by task, then entered the dummy codes for the various contents in the first step of a hierarchical regression. In other words, we conducted four separate regressions, one for each type of task (because contents differed across tasks). On the second and third steps of each of these regressions, we entered the dummy codes for the age groups and then the Age X Content interaction terms, respectively. For both self-reported behaviors and observed behaviors, the variation accounted for by age remained after controlling for content, X* = 185.35 and 9.83, respectively. In addition, however, the Age X Content interaction terms for all three tasks explained significant variation in the effect sizes even after controlling for content and age. These results show that the initial findings for age were not simply the result of a confounding of age and content. A more accurate interpretation is to say that different contents produced different patterns of age-related change (see Table 3). Whereas some contents produced an increase in the gender gap in college followed by a decrease (e.g., drinking and drugs, smoking), others produced monotonic increases or decreases in the size of the gender gap (e.g., choice dilemma, driving, sexual activities). In any event, there was no one pattern of age trends that was true for all contents. As for the factor of ambiguity, the means and confidence intervals for the unambiguous and ambiguous measures of risk taking were d = .12 (.13 to .15) and d = .16 (.14 to .18), respectively. Both means differed significantly from zero, but they did not differ from each other. Year of publication and publication type. To determine whether the gender gap in risk taking has grown smaller over time, we formed two groups of studies: (a) those conducted between 1964 and 1980 (n = 83 effects) and (b) those conducted between 1981 and 1997 (n = 235 effects). These intervals were selected to divide the total span of 34 years into two periods of 17 years each. The means and confidence intervals for these two periods were d = .20 (.17 to .23) and d = .13 (.12 to .14), respectively. The difference between these means was significant, so the gender gap appears to be growing smaller over time. To determine whether effect sizes covaried with the type of publication, we created four categories. The first category contained 14 studies from top-tier journals that have both a general focus and high standards of admission (e.g., an 80% rejection rate): Developmental Psychology, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, Child Development, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and American Journal of Public Health. The second category contained 98 studies from a large number of second-tier journals (e.g.,

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Table 1 Studies Used in the Meta-Analysis Study Aharoni (1986) Anderson & Mathieu (1995) Anderson & Mathieu (1996) Arenson (1978) Arnett & Jensen (1994)

BYRNES, MILLER, AND SCHAFER

ds (nmaf, "female, task, content, age)

-.13 (54, 50, 1, 3, 1) .12 (54, 50, 3, 2, 1) -.57 (72, 48, 2, 3, 4) .02 (316, 165, 2, 3, 4) .00 (57, 57, 3, 5, 1) -.21 (108, 125, 2, 4, 3) -.05 (108, 125, 2, 1, 3) .11 (108, 125,2, 3, 3) .33 (108, 125, 2, 2, 3) .60 (108, 125, 2, 5, 3) .02 (8500, 8500, 2, 1, 3) .23 (150, 150, 2, 5, 3)

Study Eysenck & Eysenck (1977) Fagley & Miller (1990)

<k ("male, "female- &&< Content,

age)

.38 (709, 1398, 2, 5, 5)

-.42 (45, 51, 1, 2, 4)

-.22 (45, 51, 1, 2, 4) -.18 (45, 51, 1, 2, 4)

-.12 (45, 51, 1, 2, 4)

.00 (45, 51, 1, 2, 4)

.00 (40, 54, 1, 2, 4)

.13 (40, 54, 1, 2, 4)

.31 (40, 54, 1, 2, 4)

.49 (40, 54, 1, 2, 4)

Bachman et al. (1991) Barnes & Olson (1977) Barrett (1980) Beutell & Brenner (1986) Bevier (1993) Block & Keller (1995) Bofinger (1984) Bonnelle (1995)

.49 (40, 54, 1, 2, 4)

Farrington & Kidd (1977) Finney (1984) Flaherty & Arenson (1978)
-.21 (49, 35, 3, 8, 5) .00 (6, 8, 3, 6, 4)

.04 (419, 400, 2, 3, 4) .43 (118, 84, 2,5,4) -.24(12, 11, 1, 1,2)
.00 .26 .43 .28 .18 .65 .75

(192, 32, 1, 2, 5) (93, 74, 1, 1, 5) (93, 74, 1, 3, 5) (93, 74, 1, 3, 5) (55, 101, 2, 1, 4) (55, 101, 2, 3, 4) (55, 101, 2, 2, 4)

Flisher & Chalton (1995)

.55 (55, 101, 2, 5, 4)

Booth (1995) Boverie et al. (1994) Bradley et al. (1972) Breakwell et al. (1991) Campbell et al. (1992) Carlson & Cooper (1974) Cassell (1992) Catania et al. (1994) Catania et al. (1995) Cecil (1972) Chapman et al. (1980)
-.05 (398, 195, 2, 3, 5) -.24 (398, 195, 2, 3, 5)

.52 (61, 41, 2, 5, 4)

.34 (44, 63, 3, 7, 4) .24 (240, 331, 2, 5, 4) .08 (124, 131, 2, 3, 4) .62 (20, 14, 3, 3, 5) .92 (20, 14, 3, 3, 5) .19 (154, 341, 1, 1, 5) .04 (198, 261, 2, 3, 5) .03 (171, 195, 2, 3, 5) .00(119, 115, 1, 1,4) -.17 (297, 339, 3, 2, 2) .02 (1022, 680, 3, 2, 1) .03 (170, 151, 3, 2, 3) .19 (138, 132, 3, 2, 2) .33 (145, 65, 3, 2, 3)

Foersterling (1980)

Freeman et al. (1994) Furnham & Saipe (1993) Gallois et al. (1992) Gibbons & Gerrard (1995)

Gibbons et al. (1995) Ginsburg & Miller (1982)

Choi & Catania (1996) Chusmir & Koberg (1986) Clifford et al. (1989) Clifford et al. (1990) Cochran et al. (1991) Cochran & Peplau (1991) Coet & McDermott (1979) Cooper et al. (1994) Cvetkovich (1972) Dahlback (1991) Deldin & Levin (1986) Dolcini & Adler (1994) Dwyer et al. (1994) Ebbeson & Haney (1973)

.35 (653, 468, 3, 2, 1) -.13 (1167, 1063,2, 3,5) -.35 (792, 745, 2, 3, 5)
.33 .08 .14 .53 .83

(96, 59, 2, 5, 5) (84, 116, 3,7, 1) (46, 49, 3, 7, 1) (48, 52, 3, 7, 2) (54, 52, 3, 7, 2)

Grupp et al. (1971) Hayes (1973) Heilizer & Cutter (1971)

-.20 (91, 97, 2, 3, 4)

-.16 (28, 44, 2, 3, 4) .22 (97, 91, 4, 3, 4)

.25 (91, 97, 4, 3, 4)

.66 .34 .51 .14 .63

Hudgens & Fatkin (1985) Ingersoll et al. (1993)

(91, 97, 4, 3, 4) (52, 48, 1, 1, 4) (52, 48, 1, 1, 4) (616, 560, 2, 3, 3) (40, 30, 3, 5, 4)

.08 (77, 86, 2, 5, 5) .00 (12, 12, 1, 2, 4) -.19 (88, 95, 2, 4, 2) -.04 (88, 95, 2, 1, 2) .60 (88, 95, 2, 3, 2) -.15 (904, 329, 2, 1, 5) -.15 (904, 329, 2, 3, 5) .29 (278, 186, 3, 3, 5)

Ingersoll & Orr (1989) Irwin & Tolkmitt (1968)

.66 (33, 51, 3, 6, 4) 1.11 (131,82,2,5,4) .02 (28, 40, 2, 5, 3) .15 (28, 40, 2, 1, 3) .03 (28, 40, 2, 2, 3) .43 (28, 40, 2, 5, 3) .18 (28, 40, 2, 3, 3) .15 (28, 40, 3, 1, 3) .03 (28, 40, 3, 2, 3) .18 (28, 40, 3, 3, 3) .02 (28, 40, 3, 5, 3) .43 (28, 40, 3, 5, 3) .15 (60, 60, 1, 3, 3) .21 (60, 60, 1, 3, 3) .37 (60, 60, 1, 3, 3) .49 (60, 60, 1, 3, 3) .67 (60, 60, 1, 3, 3) -.03 (507, 151, 2, 3, 5) .38 (239, 74, 2, 3, 5) -.19 (268, 77, 2, 3, 5) .85 (41, 29, 2, 2, 5) .01 (77, 74, 2, 3, 5) -.17 (303, 376, 2, 3, 4) .00 (303, 376, 2, 4, 4) .06 (303, 376, 2, 1, 4) .48 (303, 376, 2, 2, 4) .79 (72, 154, 1, 3, 3) .65 (218, 214, 1, 3, 3) .54 (152, 89, 3, 2, 1) .86 (58, 25, 3, 2, 1) .89 (67, 28, 3, 2, 1) 1.07 (45, 16, 3, 2, 1) .11 (456,849,2,5,5) .07 (30, 30, 3, 5, 1) .43 (84, 60, 3, 1, 4) .45 (27, 27, 3, 1, 4) .66 (27, 27, 3, 5, 4) .77 (84, 60, 3, 5, 4) -.78 (18, 18, 3, 3, 5) 1.00 (9, 9, 3, 3, 5) -.22 (704, 672, 2, 5, 3) -.10 (704, 672, 2, 4, 3) .00 (704, 672, 2, 1, 3) .02 (704, 672, 2, 1, 3) .03 (704, 672, 2, 1, 3) .06 (704, 672, 2, 2, 3) .10 (704, 672, 2, 5, 3) .63 (704, 672, 2, 3, 3) .23 (754, 754, 2, 3, 3) .00 (20, 20, 3, 5, 4)

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375

Table 1 (continued)
Study Jackson & Gray (1976)
rfs

("male, "female, task. Content, age)

Study

* ("mate, "female, ^k, Content, age)

Jamieson (1969) lessor et al. (1995) Karabenick & Addy (1979) Kass (1964) Kelling et al. (1976) Kogan & Dorros (1978)

Kogan & Wallach (1964) Kohler (1996) Kopfstein (1973) Kourilsky & Campbell (1984) Kreitler & Zigler (1990) Krishna (1981) Lamm (1979) Lampert & Yassour (1992) Leigh et al. (1993) Lettman (1981) Levin & Chapman (1993) Levin et al. (1988) Lupfer et al. (1971) Martinez (1995)

Martuza (1970) McCormack et al. (1993) McDonald (1976) McGaffney (1976) McKelvie & Schamer (1988) Michaels & Getting (1979) Miller (1987) Miller & Byrnes (1997)

-.09 (142, 95, 3, 3, 5) -.04(142, 95, 3, 3,5) .22 (142, 95, 3, 3, 5) .03 (142, 95, 3, 3, 5) .33 (42, 42, 3, 5, 2) .14 (639, 847, 2, 5, 3) .54 (40, 40, 3, 4, 4) .80 (21, 21, 3, 5, 1) -.16 (57, 85, 1, 1, 3) .18 (57, 85, 1, 1, 3) -.15 (80, 80, 1, 1, 4) -.10 (80, 80, 1, 1, 4) -.09 (80, 80, 1, 1, 4) .00 (80, 80, 1, , 4) .12 (80, 80, 1, , 4) .14 (80, 80, 1, , 4) .20 (80, 80, 1, , 4) .23 (80, 80, 1, , 4) .33 (80, 80, 1, , 4) .33 (80, 80, 1, , 4) .02(114, 103, 1, 1,4) -.05 (114, 103, 3, 5,4) -.59(114, 103, 3, 1,4) .57 (52, 48, 2, 5, 4) -.90 (30, 30, 3, 5, 1) -.14 (30, 30, 3, 5, 1) .10 (417, 392, 3, 8, 1) -.05 (30, 30, 3, 4, 1) .17 (30, 30, 3, 4, 2) -.30 (100, 100, 1, 1, 3) -.45 (24, 24, 3, 5, 3) -.07 (24, 24, 3, 5, 2) -.24 (181, 189, 1, 3, 5) .30 (181, 184, 1, 3, 5) -.09 (646, 767, 2, 3, 5) .27 (49, 61, 1, 3, 4) .00 (90, 104, 1, 2, 4) .10 (50, 60, 1, 2, 4) .38 (50, 60, 1, 2, 4) .31 (380, 303, 3, 5, 3) -.39 (46, 44, 1, 1, 4) -.35 (46, 44, 1, 1, 4) .20 (46, 44, 1, 1, 4) .73 (46, 44, 1, 1, 4) -.11 (68,92,3, 1,3) .41 (87, 65, 4, 3, 4) .49 (76, 57, 2, 3, 4) .04 (76, 57, 2, 3, 4) .37 (28, 30, 1, 1, 4) .27 (28, 44, 3, 8, 4) .03 (186, 123, 3, 3, 5) .05 (174, 117, 3, 3, 5) .29 (75, 75, 3, 6, 4) .43 (75, 75, 3, 6, 4) .45 (58, 54, 1, 3, 3) .49 (33, 32, 3, 4, 2) .77 (32, 34, 3, 4, 2) .24 (33, 32, 3, 5, 2) .26 (33, 32, 3, 5, 2) .48 (32, 34, 3, 5, 2) 1.17 (32, 34, 3, 5, 2) .66 (33, 32, 3, 7, 2) .71 (32, 34, 3, 7, 2) .10 (55, 60, 1, 3, 2) .19 (55, 60, 1, 3, 2)

Miller & Fagley (1991) Miller & Hoffman (1995) Mindock (1972) Minton & Miller (1970) Montgomery & Landers (1974) Moore & Erickson (1985) Moore & Rosenthal (1991) Moore & Rosenthal (1992) Morrongiello & Bradley (1997) Muldrow & Bayton (1979) Neale & Bazerman (1985) Ottomanelli (1993) Parra (1988) Poppen (1994) Poppen (1995) Potts et al. (1994) Potts et al. (1995) Reardon (1981) Reddon et al. (1996) Roberts (1975) Rotheram-Borus et al. (1992) Rothman et al. (1993) Rowe (1991) Rudolph (1996)

Rutte et al. (1987) Sadava & Forsyth (1976) Scherer (1987) Schilling et al. (1991) Schwartz (1983) Seeborg et al. (1980)

Shaw et al. (1992)

.36 (55, 60, 1, 3, 2) .37 (55, 60, 1, 3, 2) .55 (55, 60, 1, 3, 2) .84 (55, 60, 1, 3, 2) .00 (50, 44, 1, 2, 4) .58 (1204, 1204, 2, 5, 5) -.11 (9, 9, 3, 5,4) .07 (26, 26, 1, 1, 4) .07 (33, 33, 3, 5, 1) .07 (33, 33, 3, 5, 1) .07 (33, 33, 3, 5, 1) .20 (202, 391, 2, 3, 4) .30 (263, 674, 2, 3, 4) .00(71, 118,2, 3,4) .53 (71, 118, 2,2,4) .00(71, 118,2,4,4) .47 (20, 20, 1, 3, 1) .32 (20, 20, 1, 3, 2) .95 (100, 100, 1, 1, 5) .00 (50, 50, 1, 2, 5) -.01 (97, 69, 2, 1, 5) -.17 (97, 69, 2, 3, 5) .18 (30, 30, 3, 8, 4) .00(105, 110,2,3,4) .30 (74, 125, 2, 3, 4) .98 (24, 26, 2, 5, 1) .74 (39, 44, 2, 5, 1) .88 (39, 44, 2, 5, 1) -.49(108, 118, 1, 1, 3) -.09 (28, 39, 2, 5, 3) -.05 (50, 16, 2, 5, 3) .45 (101, 134, 3, 4, 4) .10 (77, 83, 2, 3, 3) .59 (104, 89, 1, 2, 4) .87 (99, 140, 2, 5, 3) .11 (906, 880,2,4, 3) .17 (906, 880, 2, 5, 3) .43 (906, 880, 2, 2, 3) -.04 (906, 880, 2, 2, 3) .54 (906, 880, 2, 5, 3) .00 (33, 33, 1, 2, 4) .42 (72, 72, 1, 1, 4) .56 (72, 72, 1, 1, 4) .94 (195, 142, 2, 5, 4) .25 (135, 109, 2, 3, 5) .10 (135, 109, 2, 3, 5) -.14 (86, 94, 1, 1, 4) -.55 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) -.41 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) -38 (51,42, 1, 1,4) -.36 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) -.20 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) -.14 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) -.02(51,42, 1, 1,4) .00 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) .02 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) .16 (51,42, 1, 1,4) .21 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) .36 (51, 42, 1, 1, 4) .67 (678, 673, 2, 2, 4) .30 (678, 673, 2, 2, 4) .64 (678, 673, 2, 5, 4) .17 (678, 673, 2, 1, 4) .21 (678, 673, 2, 1, 4)
(table continues)

376
Table 1 (continued) Study

BYRNES, MILLER, AND SCHAFER

rfs (nmale, nfemal(!, task, content, age)

.20 (678, 673, 2, 1, 4) .24 (678, 673, 2, 3, 4) .43 (678, 673, 2, 3, 4)
.29 (678, 673, 2, 5, 4)

Study Tinsley et al. (1995) Touhey (1971) Traub & Hambleton (1972) Trocki (1992) Walesa (1975) Ward et al. (1988) Warren & Simpson (1980) Wayment et al. (1993) West et al. (1996)

ds (nmale, nfema!e, task, content, age) -.19(139, 147, 2,4, 3) -.10 (139, 147, 2, 1, 3) -.08 (139, 147, 2, 2, 3) .06 (40, 40, 1, 1, 4)
.37 (505, 493, 3, 1, 2)

Sheer & Cline (1995) Sitkin & Weingart (1995) Sivak et al. (1989) Slakter (1967) Slakter (1969) Slakter et al. (1971) Slovic (1966)

.37 (678, 673, 2, 2, 4) .49 (124, 141, 2, 3, 4) .46 (122, 138, 2, 5, 4)

.00 (38, 25, 1, 2, 4) .42 (90, 90, 3, 3, 5)

.58 (495, 487, 3, 1, 2) -.03 (292, 326, 2, 3, 5)

.00 (18, 18, 3, 5, 2)

.00 (18, 18, 3, 5, 2)

.58 (18, 18, 3, 5, 1) -.25 (30, 30, 3, 8, 4)

.57 (90, 90, 3, 3, 5) .52 (21,31, 3, 1,4)

.59 (21, 31, 3, 1, 4)

-.17 (380, 297, 3, 1, 2)

.08 (522, 548, 3, 1, 3)

.35 (30, 30, 3, 8, 4) .18 (7673, 1320, 3, 3, 5) -.43 (50, 50, 2, 1, 5)

.22 (559, 373, 2, 2, 4)

.11 (600, 691, 3, 1,4)

-.09 (89, 50, 3, 5, 1) .11(110,40,3,5,2) .13 (117,42, 3, 5, 2)

.21 (94, 86, 3, 5, 1)
.33 (108, 46, 3, 5, 2) .27 (173, 49, 3, 5, 3)

.33 (559, 373, 2, 2, 4)

.02 (559, 373, 2, 2, 4) .30 (559, 373, 2, 2, 4)

White & Johnson (1988) Williams (1973) Wilson et al. (1996) Wyatt (1988)

-1.23 (34, 31, 2, 3, 3)

-.96 (151, 155, 2, 3, 3)

Snyder (1984) Sorrentino et al. (1992) Spears et al. (1992) Speltz et al. (1990) Stanford et al. (1996)

.24 (44, 49, 3, 5, 3) .32 (44, 49, 3, 5, 3) .49 (48, 92, 3, 4, 4)

.32 (124, 190, 1, 3, 4) .31 (129, 124, 2, 5, 1)

-.77 (182, 174, 2, 3, 4) -.36 (201, 185, 2, 4, 3) .44 (70, 127, 1, 3, 4)

.53 (36, 68, 1, 3, 4)

-.29 (73, 129, 1, 2, 4)

-.15 (73, 129, 1, 2, 4)

.08 (156, 147, 2, 1, 3)

.49 (88, 178, 2, 1, 4)

-.11 (73, 129, 1,2,4)

-.08 (73, 129, 1, 2, 4)

.23 (156, 147, 2, 2, 3)

.61 (88, 178, 2, 2, 4) .38 (156, 147, 2, 2, 3) .54 (88, 178, 2, 2, 4)

-.06 (73, 129, 1, 2, 4)

-.03 (73, 129, 1, 2, 4)

Yesmont (1992) Yinon et al. (1975) Zeff et al. (1994) Zuckerman et al. (1990)

.44 (73, 129, 1, 2, 4) .41 (94, 159, 2, 3, 4)

.79 (94, 159, 2, 3, 4) .87 (94, 159, 2, 3, 4)

Stapp (1986) Starrett (1983) Steptoe et al. (1995) Struckman-Johnson & Struckman-Johnson (1996)

-.08 (124, 211,2,5,5) .19(19,46, 2, 5,4) .33 (26, 27, 2, 5, 2) .60 (17, 28, 2, 5, 3) .01 (7109, 9015, 2, 4, 5) .43 (53, 54, 1, 3, 4)

1.45 (40, 29, 3, 8, 4)

-.15 (26, 19, 2, 5, 5)

-.27 (422, 649, 2, 4, 4)

Note. The codes for task, content, and age are explained in the text.

Journal of Drug Issues, Adolescence) that have a more specific focus (e.g., just articles on drug abuse, just articles on adolescents, etc.) and sometimes a higher acceptance rate than the top-tier journals. The third category included 26 studies that were published in books or journals that have lower standards for admission than the journals in the first two tiers (i.e., Psychological Reports, Journal of Psychology, Journal of General Psychology, Perceptual and Motor Skills, Research Quarterly). The fourth category contained the 15 dissertation studies. The means and confidence intervals for these four categories were as follows: (a) top-tier outlets, d = .03 (.01 to .05); (b) second-tier outlets, d = .16 (.15 to .17); (c) third-tier outlets, d = .12 (.09 to .15); and (d) dissertations, d = .25 (.21 to .29). The effect sizes from top-tier outlets were significantly smaller than the effect sizes from all other outlets. In addition, the effect sizes from second- and third-tier outlets were significantly smaller than the effect sizes from dissertations. Thus, effect sizes seem to get smaller as higher standards for admission are imposed (i.e., meth-

odological rigor and the need to appeal to a broad audience). However, it is important to qualify this interpretation in two ways. First, it should be recalled that the mean for dissertations might be somewhat inflated because of the Boolean search process used by the computerized system for dissertations. Second, journals and contents were often confounded. In fact, data points were missing for 28% of the possible combinations of journal, task, and topic. As a result, we ran four additional analyses (one for each task) in which we examined the role of journal quality after controlling for content. These analyses showed that journal quality still accounted for significant variation in the effect sizes after content was controlled. However, the Quality X Content interaction terms were often significant as well. Hence, it is more accurate to say that certain journals (e.g., Journal of Drug Education) seem to be more interested in publishing gender differences on certain topics (e.g., alcohol use) than other journals (e.g., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). These contents, in turn, produced relatively larger or smaller gender differences.

RISK TAKING Table 2 Mean Effect Sizes by Task and Content Within Task Task Hypothetical choice Choice dilemma Framing Other Self-reported behavior Smoking Drinking/drug use Sexual activities Driving Other Observed behavior Physical activity Driving Informed guessing Gambling Risky experiment Intellectual risk taking Physical skills Other
M
.07*

377

taking. In what follows, we summarize and interpret our findings in light of these issues. N effects
44 27 25

95% confidence interval

.05 to .12 -.02 to .12 .29 to .41

Overview of the Main Findings

At a general level, our results clearly support the idea that male participants are more likely to take risks than female participants. In nearly every case, the mean effect size for a given type of risk taking was significantly greater than zero (see Table 2), and almost half of the effects (i.e., 48%) were larger than .20 (i.e., the conventional cutoff for small effects). However, a more qualified interpretation of our results is to say that gender differences varied according to context and age level. As shown in Table 3, certain topics were associated with nontrivial gender differences that seemed to increase with age (e.g., driving), whereas others were associated with considerably smaller gender differences at most ages (e.g., smoking), or associated with shifts from positive to negative effects as children grow older (e.g., sexual activities). Thus, if risk taking is, in fact, "an attribute of the masculine psychology" as Wilson and Daly (1985, p. 61) suggest, it does not seem to manifest itself in a simple or constant way across ages or contexts. Of course, one could argue that the variability evident in Tables 2 and 3 is largely due to the fact that we adopted an extremely broad definition of risk taking. In other words, by including both prototypical and nonprototypical types of risk taking in our metaanalysis, we artificially increased our chances of finding significant fluctuations in the size of the gender gap. Note, however, that there is considerable variation in the size of the gender gap across age levels and topics even within the category of prototypical risk taking (see Table 3). Thus, whereas we agree that our results and conclusions largely reflect our preferred definition of risk taking,

.05
.35* -.02 .04* .07* .29* .38* .16* .17* .18* .21* .41* .40* .43* .15*

-.05 to .01 .02 to .06 .05 to .10 .26 to .32

.35 to .41 .10 to .22 .12 to .22

10
19 47 21

35 11
14 11 33 4 7 7 7

.13 to .14 to .21 to .25 to .28 to .04 to

.23 .28 .61 .55 .58 .26

Note. The asterisk indicates that the mean differs significantly from zero. The content labels are explained in the text.

Discussion
In the present article, we had two primary aims: (a) to determine the average effect size for gender differences in risk taking and (b) to reveal the extent to which gender differences vary according to context and age level. We pursued the first aim to bring order to a diverse and widely scattered literature. We pursued the latter to test the explanatory adequacy of several contemporary theories of risk

Table 3 Age X Content Interaction Means Age level Task Hypothetical choice Choice dilemma Framing Other Self-reported behavior Drinking/drugs Driving Sexual activities Smoking Other Observed behavior Informed guessing Physical activity Driving Physical skills Gambling Risky experiments Intellectual risk taking Other
1 2 3 4 5

Sig. contrasts 5>4>3

3>5 4 >3 >5 4,5 > 3 2>3 = 4>5 4>3, 5 1 >3;4>5

n/d n/d .03

n/d n/d n/d n/d .55* n/d .22* n/d -.05 .03 n/d .10 .10

-.24 n/d .39* -.04 n/d .60* -.19 .33 .31* -.06

-.24* n/d .53*

.02 .16* .22* -.04 .27* .06 .14 n/d n/d .27* n/d n/d n/d

.07*

.06
.42*
.17* .37* .18* -.15* .52*

.38* .00 .13*

-.15* .85* -.11* .01 .29*
n/d n/d .17* n/d n/d n/d n/d -.21

n/d
.48* .27* n/d .68* n/d

.09 n/d n/d .48* .31* .41* .34 .38*

2>3, 4 1 >2

2> 1

Note. Sig. contrasts means significant contrasts (i.e., the confidence intervals for the compared age-level means do not overlap). The asterisk indicates that the mean is significantly larger than zero, n/d stands for no data (i.e., gender-difference studies for that topic and age range could not be located). Age levels are defined in the text.

378

BYRNES, MILLER, AND SCHAFER people who take risks and people who avoid risks (e.g., Zuckerman, 1991). The second category consists of theories that are equipped to explain the differences between situations that promote risk taking (in most people) and situations that promote risk aversion (e.g., Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). The third category consists of theories that are equipped to explain both types of differences (i.e., they could explain why only certain people take risks in certain situations). After categorizing theories in this way, the next step is to consider the patterns of gender differences that could be explained by the theories in each group. Whereas Category 1 theories could explain a pervasive pattern of gender differences across contexts, Category 2 theories could not. Similarly, whereas Category 3 theories could explain a pattern of variable gender differences across contexts, theories in the other two categories could not. Given that we found the variable pattern, it seems reasonable to assert that Category 3 theories demonstrate greater explanatory adequacy than the theories in Categories 1 and 2. However, we need to add that some of the theories in Category 3 (e.g., Wilson & Daly's [1985] competition model) are not equipped to explain two of our findings: (a) 20% of the effects were negative and (b) some of the means in Table 3 were negative and significantly larger than zero. Hence, our results suggest that these theories need to be revised as well. Of course, to say that certain theories are equipped to handle our results is not to say that any one of these theories receives direct confirmation by our results. The authors of the studies in Table 1 were generally not interested in providing support for specific theories, so they did not provide the kind of data needed to show that one theory provides a better explanation than another. For example, they did not use measures tapping the core theoretical constructs of more than one theory. As such, all one could do is describe in a post hoc manner how different theories would explain the results. For the sake of brevity, we leave that task to the interested reader. There is, however, one additional aspect of our results that may ultimately determine the adequacy of specific accounts. We found that some contents produced similar gender differences at different ages, whereas others produced developmental increases or decreases in the size of the gender gap. Not all of the theories in Category 3 could explain cyclical developmental trends such as these. Hence, we argue that the age results narrow the field further to the following viable theories: Byrnes's (1998) self-regulation model, Irwin and Millstein's (1991) biopsychosocial account, and Wigfield and Eccles's (1992) expectancy-value model. Byrnes (1998) suggested that developmental increases in risk taking are a function of the fact that children are more likely to find themselves in novel, unmonitored environments as they grow older (e.g., going away to college). Resisting the temptation to take a risk requires a certain amount of self-regulation (i.e., a calibrated sense of uncertainty, self-corrective strategies for dealing with distractions and troublesome personality traits, and a tendency to learn from mistakes). The apparent surges in the gender gap may reflect double standards with respect to parental monitoring (e.g., more restrictions placed on women and girls), overconfidence in men and boys, and less knowledge of self-correcting strategies in men and boys. Irwin and Millstein's (1991) model was crafted to explain the increase in risk taking that is said to occur between childhood and adolescence. The model was not meant to explain

other definitions would not necessarily undermine our basic findings. One of the reasons for supplying raw data in a meta-analysis (Table 1) is to give researchers who hold differing perspectives the opportunity to reorganize, truncate, or elaborate the data in ways that might yield alternative interpretations. One further benefit of using the broad definition is that it helped us reveal two additional findings that might have been missed had we limited our analysis to just prototypical forms of risk taking. The first is an apparent lack of discernment on the part of men and boys. In one of our analyses, we showed that males took more risks even when it was clear that it was a bad idea to take a risk. The same analysis revealed the opposite was true for women and girls; that is, they seemed to be disinclined to take risks even in fairly innocuous situations or when it was a good idea to take a risk (e.g., intellectual risk taking on practice SATs). Whereas the former finding suggests that men and boys would tend to encounter failure or other negative consequences more often than women and girls, the latter finding suggests that women and girls would tend to experience success less often than they should. In our view, both of these trends are a matter of concern. However, as we noted earlier, the issue of concern is very much a function of the validity of the measures used (i.e., a gender difference on a valid and widely accepted measure would tend to generate more concern than a difference on an ambiguous or controversial measure) as well as the consequences that could arise from the risky behaviors in question. Some would argue, for example, that policymakers and researchers should be more concerned about a gender difference in an actual, dangerous behavior (e.g., reckless driving) than a gender difference in hypothetical choices. It is interesting that the means for certain observed behaviors were considerably larger than the means for certain hypothetical choices. These findings suggest that gender differences may be more likely to emerge when people have to actually carry out a risky behavior than when they have to simply consider the pros and cons of two options. If so, then the processes involved in the translation of cognitions to behavior (e.g., fear responses) may explain gender differences in risk taking more adequately than the cognitive processes involved in the reflective evaluation of options. This possibility requires further study. Another point to make is that whereas the overall mean of d = .13 would be labeled small in some statistical circles (e.g., Cohen, 1992), it conveys a different message when it is converted into a Binomial Effect Size Display (Rosenthal, 1994). In particular, a mean of d = .13 corresponds to a 6% difference in the risk-taking rates of men and women (e.g., 53% of men take risks vs. only 47% of women). In potentially dangerous activities that are performed by a large number of people (e.g., driving, unprotected sex, etc.), this 6% difference would accumulate across behaviors and time to produce a substantial gender difference in the number of expected injuries or death (e.g., 60,000 if we assume one million female drivers and one million male drivers). Thus, we believe that many of the gender differences in Tables 2 and 3 are a matter of concern.

Implications of the Findings for Theories of Risk Taking

As we noted earlier, a useful way to understand the theoretical implications of our results is to think of theories as falling into one of three categories (Lopes, 1987). The first category consists of theories that are equipped to explain the differences between

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379

gender differences per se, but it seems to suggest that surges in the gender gap would be due to periodic changes in the following: (a) biological maturation, (b) cognitive scope (e.g., future time perspective), (c) self-perceptions (e.g., self-esteem), (d) perceptions of the social environment (e.g., parental and peer influences), (e) personal values (e.g., independence), (f) risk perception (e.g., optimistic bias), and (g) characteristics of the peer group (e.g., peer age). These factors may independently or collectively influence males and females in different ways at different times. Wigfield and Eccles's (1992) model suggests that gender differences would arise whenever males and females hold different expectations and values. Expectations and values can show dramatic shifts whenever children enter novel environments (e.g., children making the transition to middle school). At present, it is not clear which of these models provides the most accurate explanation. Suggestions for Future Research Several findings require further explication and analysis in subsequent studies. The first pertains to intriguing differences in the age trends for the four types of self-reported behaviors. Table 3 shows that the shift between high school and college seems to promote a sharper increase in drinking and drug use in men than in women. At present, it is not clear whether this finding reflects the fact that men are confronted with risk-inducing contexts more often than women (e.g., they attend a greater number of parties) or whether women have a greater capacity to negotiate themselves through these risk-inducing situations than men. The latter would not appear to be the case because women seem to be significantly more likely to smoke during their college years than men and also seem to be more likely to drink, take drugs, or engage in risky sexual activities in their post-college years (see Table 3). Such findings could be interpreted in one of two ways. The first would be that contexts make different demands on men and women at different points in time. The second interpretation would be that men are somewhat "precocious" (i.e., men engage in these activities earlier than women but women eventually catch up and surpass men). Future research should determine which of these explanations seems to be more accurate. In addition, more work is needed to understand the reasons for the age trends revealed for driving and gambling behaviors. At most age levels, the effects for these two behaviors were twice as large as the overall mean of d = .13. In the case of driving, the findings are troubling because the gender gap appears to widen with age. Note, however, that there was a high degree of ambiguity in the measurement of driving risks. For example, in some studies, participants simply rated their own riskiness. In others, experimenters used ambiguous indexes such as wait time before making a turn. Hence, more studies with tighter controls are needed to verify the age trends that we revealed for driving. In the case of gambling, the measures were less ambiguous, but it is still not clear why males seemed to be more inclined to take gambling risks than females and why the gender gap does not appear to change with age. One factor that could possibly explain both sets of findings for driving and gambling would be a gender-linked difference in competitiveness (Miller & Byrnes, 1997; Wilson & Daly, 1985). Future studies should explore this possibility and others.

In general, then, we revealed a number of important trends that require further explication. To add greater clarity to the study of gender differences, researchers should (a) construct unambiguous measures of both appropriate and inappropriate forms of risk taking, (b) construct valid measures tapping the core constructs of several different theories of risk taking (to see which of the remaining viable theories is the most adequate), and (c) give these measures to multiple age groups (to further probe the meaning of our age trends). The findings from such studies would make an important and much-needed contribution to the literature and would provide important insight into possible ways to improve the risk-taking skills of children, adolescents, and adults.

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Received July 7, 1997 Revision received September 9, 1998 Accepted October 14, 1998

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