There is a little bit more color on some of the PR write-ups, see eg
They recruited 60 experienced and affluent backers to view video recordings of 90 randomly-selected verbal business pitches made by entrepreneurs from various sectors at three entrepreneurial contests in the US.
Investors were asked to rate the looks of the entrepreneurs and comment on the pitch.
Researchers found that men who were deemed good looking were 36 per cent more likely to be successful than those viewed as unattractive. However there was no difference for women.
In a separate study they asked investors to listen to the same pitches delivered by a man or a woman.
“We found that male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based that were the same pitches narrated by a female voice,” the authors concluded. . .
I don't have much of a stats background... The first question that jumped to mind is whether or not the quality of the pitch could have affected the perceived attractiveness (could the investors have seen the people with better pitches as more attractive?). Can that sort of thing be controlled for somehow?
Your original point still stands. It's possible that the men chosen to do the readings just so happened to be better readers/pitchers than the women, even with the exact same script. It's hard to think of a foolproof way to control for that, other than getting a large enough sample and recruiting both men and women of approximately equal experience. Neither of those is a perfect solution, though.
Theoretically, you'd want some way to have the pitches read with precisely the same cadences and intonations, but have the ability to just swap out a female voice for a male voice. One could imagine a computer program which "female-izes" a man's reading, though I doubt anything like this exists in a form which produces a perfectly realistic sounding female voice.
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There is a little bit more color on some of the PR write-ups, see eg
They recruited 60 experienced and affluent backers to view video recordings of 90 randomly-selected verbal business pitches made by entrepreneurs from various sectors at three entrepreneurial contests in the US.
Investors were asked to rate the looks of the entrepreneurs and comment on the pitch.
Researchers found that men who were deemed good looking were 36 per cent more likely to be successful than those viewed as unattractive. However there was no difference for women.
In a separate study they asked investors to listen to the same pitches delivered by a man or a woman.
“We found that male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based that were the same pitches narrated by a female voice,” the authors concluded. . .
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10688645/Goo...
I don't have much of a stats background... The first question that jumped to mind is whether or not the quality of the pitch could have affected the perceived attractiveness (could the investors have seen the people with better pitches as more attractive?). Can that sort of thing be controlled for somehow?
Edit: ah, the same pitches were read. Nevermind.
Your original point still stands. It's possible that the men chosen to do the readings just so happened to be better readers/pitchers than the women, even with the exact same script. It's hard to think of a foolproof way to control for that, other than getting a large enough sample and recruiting both men and women of approximately equal experience. Neither of those is a perfect solution, though.
Theoretically, you'd want some way to have the pitches read with precisely the same cadences and intonations, but have the ability to just swap out a female voice for a male voice. One could imagine a computer program which "female-izes" a man's reading, though I doubt anything like this exists in a form which produces a perfectly realistic sounding female voice.