Peer Influence in Educational Choices: Social Image Concerns and Same-Gender Interactions

This paper investigates how peer influence shapes adolescents’ educational choices, focusing on gender stereotypes and anticipated peer interactions. Using administrative data on Italian middle school students and a lab-in-the-field experiment, the authors show that exposure to high-achieving male peers in mathematics reduces girls’ likelihood of choosing scientific high school tracks. The study finds that girls are particularly discouraged from selecting gender-counterstereotypical fields when they expect to interact with more male classmates, whereas boys’ choices are largely unaffected by peer gender composition or social image concerns. The findings offer new insights into the persistence of gender gaps in STEM education.