Doing Your Best When Stakes Are High? Theory and Experimental Evidence

Arbeitspapier

Achieving an ambitious goal frequently requires succeeding in a sequence of intermediary tasks, some being critical for the final outcome, and others not. Individuals are not always able to provide a level of effort sufficient to guarantee success in all the intermediary tasks. The ability to manage effort throughout the sequence of tasks is therefore critical. In this paper we propose a criterion that defines the importance of a task and that identifies how an individual should optimally allocate a limited stock of exhaustible efforts over tasks. We test this importance criterion in a laboratory experiment that reproduces the main features of a tennis match. We show that our importance criterion is able to predict the individuals' performance and it outperforms the Morris importance criterion that defines the importance of a point in terms of its impact on the probability to achieve the final outcome. We also find no evidence of choking under pressure and stress, as proxied by electrophysiological measures.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 9766

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Noncooperative Games ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Group Behavior ; Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
• Thema: critical ability ; choking under pressure ; Morris-importance ; Skin Conductance Responses ; experiment

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Houy, Nicolas ; Nicolaï, Jean-Philippe ; Villeval, Marie Claire
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2016

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/141525
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:45 MEZ