No gender difference in willingness to compete when competing against self

Arbeitspapier

We report on two experiments investigating whether there is a gender difference in thewillingness to compete against oneself (self-competition), similar to what is found whencompeting against others (other-competition). In one laboratory and one online marketexperiment, involving a total of 1,200 participants, we replicate the gender-gap inwillingness to other-compete but find no evidence of a gender difference in the willingnessto self-compete. We explore the roles of risk and confidence and suggest that these factorscan account for the different findings. Finally, we document that self-competition does noworse than other-competition in terms of performance boosting.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: DIW Discussion Papers ; No. 1638

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: General ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination ; Labor Discrimination
• Subject: gender ; competition ; discrimination ; experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Apicella, Coren L. ; Demiral, Elif E. ; Mollerstrom, Johanna
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
• (where): Berlin
• (when): 2017

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/149901
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET