Social identity and competitiveness

Recent experimental results indicate that women do not like competitive environments as much as men do. Another literature is interested in the effect of social identity on economic behaviors. This paper investigates in the lab the impact of social identity on men and women's willingness to compete both individually and as part of a team. To this aim, participants from the Identity sessions had to go through group identity building activities in the lab while participants from the Benchmark sessions did not. The main result is that men are only willing to enter a team competition with a teammate of unknown ability if they share a common group identity with him or her. This change of behavior seems to be caused by high-performing men who are less reluctant to be matched with a possibly less able participant when he or she belongs to his group. On the other hand, group identity does not seem to induce women to take actions more in the interest of the group they belong to. --Social Identity,Gender Effects,Tournament,Teams

Social identity and competitiveness

"Recent experimental results indicate that women do not like competitive environments as much as men do. Another literature is interested in the effect of social identity on economic behaviors. This paper investigates in the lab the impact of social identity on men and women's willingness to compete both individually and as part of a team. To this aim, participants from the Identity sessions had to go through group identity building activities in the lab while participants from the Benchmark sessions did not. The main result is that men are only willing to enter a team competition with a teammate of unknown ability if they share a common group identity with him or her. This change of behavior seems to be caused by high-performing men who are less reluctant to be matched with a possibly less able participant when he or she belongs to his group. On the other hand, group identity does not seem to induce women to take actions more in the interest of the group they belong to." (author's abstract

Incentives to learn calibration: a gender-dependent impact

Miscalibration can be defined as the fact that people think that their knowledge is more precise than it actually is. In a typical miscalibration experiment, subjects are asked to provide subjective confidence intervals. A very robust finding is that subjects provide too narrow intervals at the 90% level. As a result a lot less than 90% of correct answers fall inside the 90% intervals provided. As miscalibration is linked with bad results on an experimental financial market (Biais et al., 2005) and entrepreneurial success is positively correlated with good calibration (Regner et al., 2006), it appears interesting to look for a way to cure or at least reduce miscalibration. Previous attempts to remove the miscalibration bias relied on extremely long and tedious procedures. Here, we design an experimental setting that provides several different incentives, in particular strong monetary incentives i.e. that make miscalibration costly. Our main result is that a thirty-minute training session has an effect on men''s calibration but no effect on women''s.miscalibration, overconfidence, incentives, gender effect

Incentives to Learn Calibration : a Gender-Dependent Impact

Miscalibration can be defined as the fact that people think that their knowledge is more precise than it actually is. In a typical miscalibration experiment, subjects are asked to provide subjective confidence intervals. A very robust finding is that subjects provide too narrow intervals at the 90% level. As a result a lot less than 90% of correct answers fall inside the 90% intervals provided. As miscalibration is linked with bad results on a experimental financial market (Biais et al., 2005) and entrepreneurial success is positively correlated with good calibration (Regner et al., 2006), it appears interesting to look for a way to cure or at least reduce miscalibration. Previous attempts to remove the miscalibration bias relied on extremely long and tedious procedures. Here, we design an experimental setting that provides several different incentives, in particular strong monetary incentives ; i.e. that make miscalibration costly. Our main result is that a thirty-minute training session has an effect on men's calibration but no effect on women's.Miscalibration, overconfidence, incentives, gender effect.

Men too sometimes shy away from competition: the case of team competition

"Recent results in experimental and personnel economics indicate that women do not like competitive environments as much as men. This article presents an experimental design giving participants the opportunity to enter a tournament as part of a team rather than alone. While a large and significant gender gap in entry in the individual tournament is found in line with the literature, no gender gap is found in entry in the team tournament. Women do not enter the tournament significantly more often when it is team-based but men enter significantly less when they are part of a team rather than alone. The main reason for men’s disaffection for the team competition appears to be linked to the uncertainty on their teammate’s ability. More precisely, high-performing men fear to be the victims of the free-riding behaviour of their teammate." (author's abstract

Linking Beliefs to Willingness to Compete

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/cesdp2012.htmlDocuments de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2012.75 - ISSN : 1955-611XMen are known to have a higher taste for competition than women. This paper presents an experiment that analyses the different determinants of the choice to enter a competition : beliefs and the competition level. As far as entry in the competition is concerned, low-performing subjects adapt their decision entry to the level of the competition, whereas high-performers do no. However, the behaviors leading to these results are quite different for men and women : women mainly react to the information on their own performance while men seem to respond more to their beliefs concerning the level of the competition they will be evolving in. Finally, both men and women deviate from their bayesian beliefs and become too pessimistic (optimistic) after a negative (positive) feedback.Les travaux récents montrent que les hommes ont un goût pour la compétition plus prononcé que les femmes. Cet article présente un protocole expérimental mettant en évidence les différents déterminants du choix d'entrer en compétition : les croyances et le niveau de la compétition. Nous trouvons que les sujets peu performants s'adaptent au niveau de la compétition, ce qui n'est pas le cas des sujets performants. Notre expérience permet aussi de montrer que l'information n'est pas traitée de la même façon par les hommes et par les femmes : les femmes donnent plus de poids à l'information reçue, tandis que les hommes tiennent plus compte du niveau de la compétition auquel ils vont faire face. De manière générale, les hommes et les femmes dévient des croyances bayésiennes et l'information sur leur performance les rend trop pessimistes si cette information est négative (trop optimiste dans le cas contraire)

Incentives to Learn Calibration : a Gender-Dependent Impact

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/CESFramDP2008.htmClassification JEL : D81, C91.Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2008.88 - ISSN : 1955-611XMiscalibration can be defined as the fact that people think that their knowledge is more precise than it actually is. In a typical miscalibration experiment, subjects are asked to provide subjective confidence intervals. A very robust finding is that subjects provide too narrow intervals at the 90% level. As a result a lot less than 90% of correct answers fall inside the 90% intervals provided. As miscalibration is linked with bad results on a experimental financial market (Biais et al., 2005) and entrepreneurial success is positively correlated with good calibration (Regner et al., 2006), it appears interesting to look for a way to cure or at least reduce miscalibration. Previous attempts to remove the miscalibration bias relied on extremely long and tedious procedures. Here, we design an experimental setting that provides several different incentives, in particular strong monetary incentives ; i.e. that make miscalibration costly. Our main result is that a thirty-minute training session has an effect on men's calibration but no effect on women's.On désigne par l'anglicisme "miscalibration" le fait que les individus pensent que leur savoir est plus précis qu'il ne l'est en réalité. On mesure typiquement la miscalibration en demandant aux sujets de fournir des intervalles de confiance à 90% pour une série de questions. Or, de nombreuses études (voir Lichtenstein and Fischhhoff (1977) pour une revue de littérature) montrent que le taux de réponses correctes appartenant aux intervalles à 90% fournis est toujours bien inférieur à 90%. On parle alors de miscalibration dans la mesure où les individus fournissent des intervalles à 90% trop étroits. Les liens existant entre la miscalibration et de mauvaises performances économiques (Biais et al. (2005), Regner et al. (2006)) expliquent l'intérêt pour les économistes d'étudier ce biais. Notre protocole expérimental vise à réduire la miscalibration par le biais d'incitations directes, notamment monétaires. Notre résultat principal est que nos incitations ont un effet sur la calibration des hommes, ceux ayant suivi notre entrainement fournissant des intervalles plus larges, mais aucun effet tangible sur celle des femmes

Self-confidence and unraveling in matching markets

We document experimentally how biased self-assessments affect the outcome of matching markets. In the experiments, we exogenously manipulate the self-confidence of participants regarding their relative performance by employing hard and easy real-effort tasks. We give participants the option to accept early offers when information about their performance has not been revealed, or to wait for the assortative matching based on their actual relative performance. Early offers are accepted more often when the task is hard than when it is easy. We show that the treatment effect works through a shift in beliefs, i.e., underconfident agents are more likely to accept early offers than overconfident agents. The experiment identifies a behavioral determinant of unraveling, namely biased self-assessments, which can lead to penalties for underconfident individuals as well as efficiency losses

Ratio der Geschlechter: Experimente ergründen die Wettbewerbsscheu bei Mann und Frau

"Treten Männer und Frauen als Teams im Wettbewerb an, lösen sich die Geschlechterunterschiede, die sich individuell als unterschiedliche Neigung oder Abneigung zu Wettbewerbssituationen feststellen ließen, auf. Allerdings reduziert sich auch die Gesamtqualität derjenigen, die am Wettbewerb teilnehmen. Vor allem leistungsstarke Männer wollen sich nicht als Teil eines Teams einem Wettbewerb stellen, es sei denn, ihnen wird ein gleichstarker Partner zugesichert." (Autorenreferat)"When having to decide whether to enter an individual tournament or to stay out, men are more likely than women to go for the competitive option. This however is not the case when the competition is team-based. In team-based competitions, men are more prone to shy away from competition as they do not want to let a less competent team mate take advantage of them." (author's abstract

Self-Confidence and Unraveling In Matching Markets

We document experimentally how biased self-assessments affect the outcome of matching markets. In the experiments, we exogenously manipulate the self-confidence of participants regarding their relative performance by employing hard and easy real-effort tasks. We give participants the option to accept early offers when information about their performance has not been revealed, or to wait for the assortative matching based on their actual relative performance. Early offers are accepted more often when the task is hard than when it is easy. We show that the treatment effect works through a shift in beliefs, i.e., underconfident agents are more likely to accept early offers than overconfident agents. The experiment identifies a behavioral determinant of unraveling, namely biased self-assessments, which can lead to penalties for underconfident individuals as well as efficiency losses