what’s your threshold?

First things first, I’m excited to tell you: The Playing Big book is written! It’s in to the publisher. Advance copies are making their ways to magazines and media outlets now. Publication date, October 14th, 2014. It’s so damn exciting. I’m proud of it, I love it, and I can’t wait to share it with you. More soon.

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So here’s my question for you today: how often do you say, “I don’t know”? And when do you say it? And why?

The research finding is this: women hold themselves to a higher threshold of certainty before offering an opinion on a topic, as compared to men. In other words, in order to share an idea, information, a guess, women tend to think they need to be fairly sure they are right, in order to speak up. Men hold themselves to a lower certainty threshold.

Maybe this is one of those things we didn’t really need a study to tell us?

But it’s good to remember. And it’s especially important to remain aware of the second research finding: Because of that high certainty threshold, women will often say “I don’t know” if they aren’t sure of the answer, or sure what they think. They will often pick the “I don’t know” option on a multiple choice test.

But…here’s where things get really interesting: When there is no “I don’t know” option that women can choose and they are pressed to give an answer, they are right just as much as the time as the dudes. If the “I don’t know” option is available, many more women than men will choose it, and so both they and their audience will never find out that the women really did know the answer.

When I first wrote about this, a couple years ago, the finding had shown up in a study about women and men’s financial literacy. The initial study gave men and women a multiple choice quiz about finance, and the results showed men had higher levels of knowledge about the topic. But in the second version of the study, when the “I don’t know” option was removed from the multiple choice quiz, the gender gap in performance significantly narrowed.

Now the same finding is showing up in regards to political knowledge, and is even skewing political poll results, according to this recent New York Times article.

Sometimes, of course, being conservative when we aren’t sure about something is a good idea. We are mitigating risk, being conscientious of how flippantly offered opinions or faulty assumptions might negatively impact others. But, the findings tell us, overall women underestimate how often their uncertain leaning, is right.

So, next time you feel tempted to retreat into “I don’t know,” go with your hunch instead. Click to tweet.

Love to you,

Tara