Founder gender and investor pitch assessments: an fMRI multivariate patent analysis investigation

We extend recent conversations on gender differences in entrepreneurship by examining investors’ neural responses to pitches made by male versus female founders. We conduct an experiment that assigns a series of male and female entrepreneur pitches to prospective investors, while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning to investigate differential neural activations. We find that neural activity in the left posterior temporal fusiform cortex is significantly enhanced when investors are presented with pitches from male versus female entrepreneurs. Moreover, using machine learning methods we can reliably decode the gender of the entrepreneur from both multivariate neural activation patterns of investors (71% above chance) and investing interest (86% above chance), thereby exposing a possible association between neural mechanisms and behavioral attitudes towards male entrepreneurs.