Miss France, ambassador for maths among girls?
Within the space of a week, there has been (once again) a lot of talk about mathematics in France. First, the results of the famous PISA survey were released, raising concerns about French students' performance in this subject. Then, the Miss France pageant put university education in the spotlight, as this year's winner happened to be a student of applied mathematics.
Angela Sutan, Burgundy School of Business ; Noémie Bobin, University of Montpellier and Sylvain Max, Burgundy School of Business
Could a Miss France who is a mathematics student be a role model for young girls and encourage them to pursue a field of study that they are currently abandoning en masse?
This is a tempting hypothesis to put forward, given that role models can inspire vocations and that meetings between professionals and high school students can remove barriers to certain educational paths. However, we must take into account a well-known phenomenon in behavioral economics: the "dilution effect."
Students and role models
Eve Gilles is not the first Miss France to be a mathematician. In 1962, Muguette Fabris won the title after graduating with a degree in mathematics. Many Miss France contestants are pursuing or have pursued long courses of study, sometimes in science. However, neither in 1962 nor since then has their presence on the podium had a role model effect, encouraging young girls to follow in their footsteps and study science.
A role model is someone who has been particularly successful in a field where the group to which they belong is considered to be less successful. Numerous studies show that a role model, i.e., a member who bucks the stereotypes of their social group, can be an inspiring figure. Others may want to replicate or imitate their qualities or achievements.
This is wheretheso-calleddilution effectcomes into play: behavioral science has proven that individuals tend to instinctively believe that something that fulfills a single function is better than something that fulfills the same function plus additional functions (for example, a product that cleans and is environmentally friendly).
In other words, the accumulation of objectives is likely to reduce or dilute the perceived effectiveness of achieving each objective, thereby reducing the likelihood that the object in question will be perceived as effective for its intended purpose.
This is true for objects, but the same principle applies to people: a candidate participating in Miss France, where beauty is the main selection criterion, will be considered less beautiful if, in addition to being beautiful, she is also... intelligent. In fact, the new Miss France has faced a wave of criticism on social media.
Cognitive biases to consider
In marketing theory, people who vote to elect Miss France make choices that correspond to preferences, based on the information available. The fact that a candidate is selected for the final round of the competition validates her "beauty" attribute. This mainly solves a problem of information asymmetry: the belief attribute (I believe that a girl could be beautiful, but I am not sure about the current standard of beauty or what others think) becomes a search attribute, reducing uncertainty (I am certain that this candidate is beautiful according to a social standard, and now it is a matter of choosing the most beautiful).
Therefore, it is intuitively convincing to inform voters of another attribute of the candidate in question, especially if this attribute does not objectively affect the "beauty" dimension: the fact that she has studied, for example, is not supposed to detract from her beauty capital. It should even be beneficial to her. However, in practice, things are more complicated, because individuals mistakenly perceive that the beauty dimension may have been impaired by education... due to the orthogonality and therefore the dissonance of these two attributes.
There are two reasons for this discrepancy: first, the goal dilution model suggests that when multiple goals are pursued with a single means, individuals perceive them as being less effectively achieved than when the goals are pursued individually.
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Second, the zero-sum game heuristic suggests that individuals believe that an increase in quality in one aspect of a product is automatically offset by a decrease in quality in other aspects: if, in addition to being beautiful, you are also intelligent, it is at the expense of being less beautiful, as if the sum of intelligence and beauty had to remain constant and therefore, to be intelligent, you had to give up a little beauty.
The zero-sum bias refers to the tendency to intuitively judge a situation as being zero-sum: resources invested in one area would automatically be offset by an equivalent loss of resources invested in other areas, even if the objective situation is actually non-zero-sum.
Talking about sports rather than math?
It therefore seems pointless to continue talking about the studies that beauty queens may have completed. This will not have the desired effect in the long term and, in the short term, will reinforce the perception that beauty queens are less attractive.
However, there is one attribute that most Miss France contestants have, and which is not talked about enough: an attribute that goes hand in hand with beauty. That is playing sports.
Counterintuitively, talking about sports could encourage more young girls to study math! Why? It has been established that athletes benefit from a "sports bonus" in the form of higher salaries and benefits, better employability, and shorter periods of unemployment.
Athletes are more likely to be paid based on their performance, which reduces the gender pay gap. The psychological traits of athletes may also correspond to those that determine entrepreneurial intent and success.
All of this has important implications for higher education policy. Participating in sports has a causal influence on success in competitions (such as Miss France, but also in life in general), which argues in favor of strengthening its role in the education of all young people. Increasing competitiveness through participation in sports seems to be a possible way to close the competitiveness gap between men and women.
Angela Sutan, Professor of Behavioral Economics, Burgundy School of Business ; Noémie Bobin, PhD student in Behavioral and Experimental Economics, University of Montpellier and Sylvain Max, Social Psychologist, Associate Professor, Burgundy School of Business
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