Arbeitspapier
Self-Confidence and Reactions to Subjective Performance Evaluations
Subjective performance evaluations are commonly used to provide feedback and incentives to workers. However, such evaluations can generate significant disagreements and conflicts, the severity of which may be driven by many factors. In this paper we show that a workers' level of self-confidence plays a central role in shaping reactions to subjective evaluations - overconfident agents engage in costly punishment when they receive evaluations below their own, but provide limited rewards to principals when evaluations exceed their own. In contrast, underconfident agents do not significantly react to evaluations below their own, but reward significantly evaluations exceeding their own. Our analysis exploits data from a principal-agent experiment run with a large sample of the Danish working age population, varying the financial consequences associated with the evaluations workers receive. In contrast to existing economic models of reciprocal behavior, reactions to evaluations are weakly related to the financial consequences of the evaluations. These results point towards a behavioral model of reciprocity that intertwines the desire to protect self-perceptions with over-/underconfidence.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 12215
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
Economics of Contract: Theory
Labor Contracts
- Subject
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subjective performance evaluations
self-confidence
reciprocity
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Bellemare, Charles
Sebald, Alexander
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
- (where)
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Bonn
- (when)
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2019
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Bellemare, Charles
- Sebald, Alexander
- Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Time of origin
- 2019
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