Cognitive performance in competitive environments: Evidence from a natural experiment

Abstract

Competitive situations that involve cognitive performance are widespread in labor markets, schools, and organizations, including test taking, competition for promotion in firms, and others. This paper studies cognitive performance in a high-stakes competitive environment. The analysis takes advantage of a natural experiment which randomly allocates different emotional states across professional subjects competing in a cognitive task. The setting is a chess match where two players play an even number of chess games against each other alternating the color of the pieces. White pieces confer an advantage for winning a chess game and who starts the match with these pieces is randomly decided. We provide a theoretical model to guide the empirical analysis. The model shows that in this setting there is no rational reason why winning frequencies should be better than 50-50 in favor of the player drawing the white pieces in the first game. Yet, we find that observed frequencies are about 60-40. As predicted, we also find that psychological effects are stronger when the competing subjects are more similar in cognitive skills. We conclude that these elements affect cognitive performance in the face of experience, competition, and high stakes. * We thank

Modeling the Effects of Psychological Pressure on First-Mover Advantage in Competitive Interactions

“…As an initial illustration of the results generated by our model, we consider a baseline scoring probability of .75, which most closely approximates the scoring rate reported in prior studies of penalty kicks; representative rates include 74.3% for nonshoot-out penalty kicks reported by Dohmen (2008) and 73.1% for shoot-out penalty kicks reported by APH. Since the prior literature provides no specific guidance with regard to the magnitude of the lagging-behind effect and given the fact that the amount of pressure may vary depending on the stakes of the competition (Genakos & Pagliero, 2012; González-Díaz & Palacios-Huerta, 2016), we consider a variety of values coupled with this base scoring probability. Regardless of the value chosen, the presence of a lagging-behind effect does translate into an advantage for Team 1.…”

“…Prior investigations have established an advantage to moving first across several sporting contexts. Both Kingston (1976) and Anderson (1977) modeled the relationship between moving first and performance outcomes in tennis, while Magnus and Klaassen (1999) provided empirical evidence of an advantage of serving first in tennis due to a “first game effect.” The advantage of moving first has also been demonstrated in cognition-based competitions such as chess (González-Díaz & Palacios-Huerta, 2016).…”

The endgame

“…Our game belongs to the latter. The payoff is quasi-binary as in González-Díaz and Palacios-Huerta (2016) and similar to the one studied by Lasso de la Vega and Volij (2018). 9…”

The Value of a Draw in Quasi-Binary Matches

“…For instance, Walker and Wooders [10] test the minimax hypothesis using data on tennis, Palacios-Huerta [6] tests the same hypothesis using data on penalty shootouts. Apesteguia and Palacios-Huerta [1] observe a first-kicker anomaly in penalty shootouts and Gonzalez-Díaz and Palacios-Huerta [4] observe a similar anomaly in chess matches. This paper also offers a brief theoretical analysis of a particular finite chess match.…”