Brown Bag Seminar: Preferences over penalties for wrong answers

Multiple-choice exams are widely used in educational settings, whether during course exams or university admissions, carrying important implications on how students are evaluated. A critical evaluators’ dilemma is whether or not to impose penalties for wrong answers. On the one hand, penalties can discourage students from guessing; on the other hand, they tend to disproportionately disadvantage female test-takers, who are found to be more loss-averse than males. The latter finding has been conducive to policy proposals aimed to address and reduce the gender gap in questions skipped. However, little is known about students’ preferences regarding exam penalties, specifically related to both competitive and non-competitive environments, and about how these preferences depend on relevant personal characteristics such as ability, confidence, and gender. To address these questions, we propose a novel experimental design in which we elicit students’ preferences over imposing penalties for wrong answers. We will assess these preferences in both competitive and non-competitive environments, as well as when students are directly involved and when they are not. Additionally, we plan to investigate teachers’ views and preferences on imposing penalties for wrong answers and to examine whether and how they react to both students’ preferences over penalties and the evidence on their differential impact by gender.