Investors prefer entrepreneurial ventures pitched by attractive men
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Brooks-2014-Investors prefer ent.pdf
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611.91 KB
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Author(s)
Murray, Fiona E.
Kearney, Sarah Wood
Brooks, Alison Wood
Huang, Laura
Date Issued
March 2014
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
Citation
Brooks, A. W., L. Huang, S. W. Kearney, and F. E. Murray. “Investors Prefer Entrepreneurial Ventures Pitched by Attractive Men.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 12 (March 10, 2014): 4427–4431.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Entrepreneurship is a central path to job creation, economic growth, and prosperity. In the earliest stages of start-up business creation, the matching of entrepreneurial ventures to investors is critically important. The entrepreneur’s business proposition and previous experience are regarded as the main criteria for investment decisions. Our research, however, documents other critical criteria that investors use to make these decisions: the gender and physical attractiveness of the entrepreneurs themselves. Across a field setting (three entrepreneurial pitch competitions in the United States) and two experiments, we identify a profound and consistent gender gap in entrepreneur persuasiveness. Investors prefer pitches presented by male entrepreneurs compared with pitches made by female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitch is the same. This effect is moderated by male physical attractiveness: attractive males were particularly persuasive, whereas physical attractiveness did not matter among female entrepreneurs.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1321202111
