Feedback and Incentives: Experimental Evidence

Eriksson, Tor; Poulsen, Anders; Villeval, Marie Claire

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1127132

Cited by 94 publications

(125 citation statements)

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“…The gender composition of each session was roughly half women and half men. 20 Each session lasted about one hour and subjects earned 14.93 Euros on average (including a show-up fee of 4 Euros). Table 1 shows for each gender and treatment the number of observations, the average number of correctly solved problems (average number correct), the average guessed rank and the corresponding standard deviations.…”

Section: Additional Questions After the Elicitation Of The Guessed Rankmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do women have more shame than men? An experiment on self-assessment and the shame of overestimating oneself

Ludwig

Fellner-Röhling

Thoma

2017

European Economic Review

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We analyze how subjects' self-assessment depends on whether its accuracy is observable to others. We find that women downgrade their selfassessment given observability while men do not. Women avoid the shame they may have if others observe that they overestimated themselves. Men, however, do not seem to be similarly shame-averse. This gender difference may be due to different societal expectations: While we find that men are expected to be overconfident, women are not. Shame-aversion may explain recent findings that women shy away from competition, demanding jobs and wage negotiations, as entering these situations is a statement to be confident of one's ability.

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Section: Additional Questions After the Elicitation Of The Guessed Rankmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do women have more shame than men? An experiment on self-assessment and the shame of overestimating oneself

Ludwig

Fellner-Röhling

Thoma

2017

European Economic Review

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“…In particular, they found a stronger effect under piece-rate incentives, whereas the effect under flat-rate incentives was milder. Similarly, Barankay (2011) and Eriksson et al (2009) did not find any positive effect of providing participants with feedback rank information. On the other hand, Blanes i Vidal and Nossol (2011) found that when piece-rate incentives were used, providing individuals with relative performance feedback increased productivity.…”

Section: Experimental Economics Literature On Status-seekingmentioning

confidence: 90%

Does Death Make Us All Equal? Conformism and Status-Seeking Under Mortality Salience

Orsini

Ciaramelli

2015

SSRN Journal

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The thought of one's own death induces anxiety and threatens self-esteem. According to Terror Management Theory, to reduce this existential threat individuals typically embrace their cultural worldview, and seek for an increase in self-esteem and status by improving their productivity. Within an experimental economy setting, this paper investigates the effect of Mortality Salience (MS) on individual productivity, using for the first time a real-effort task where the economic incentive is to not perform. We investigated whether the improvement in productivity was significantly driven by self-esteem or status seeking, providing either private feedback alone or, additionally, public feedback. Always controlling for participants' individual susceptibility to the MS induction, our results indicate that subjects generally tend to be more sensitive to in-group conformity under MS compared to a control (Music) induction condition. That is, they initially improve their performance to enhance self-esteem, but then homologate to average performance levels, consistent with the incentive not to perform. However, for a subset of less materialistic participants, with strong susceptibility to MS, performance levels constantly improved along the task. This research has benefited from discussions with a number of people. We would like to thank Maria Bigoni, Fabio Galeotti, Alexia Gaudeul, Antonino Rotolo as well as participants at SONIC meeting and internal seminar at University of Bologna. Financial support from the University of Bologna -FARB research project "Mortality salience, conformitá a norme giuridiche e sociali, comportamenti economici: modelli teorici e metodologie sperimentali" is gratefully aknowledged. KeywordsMan is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.Blaise Pascal, Pensées.

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“…Guryan, Kroft and Notowidigdo (2009) show that in golf tournaments in which 8 partners are randomly assigned the partner's ability does not affect performance. In a laboratory setting, Eriksson, Poulsen and Villeval (2009) analyze the influence of feedback about coworker's productivity on the individual performance when workers are paid a piece-rate payment scheme and when they participate in a competitive tournament. They identify a negative quality peer effect as the relative performance feedback reduces the quality of the low performers' work, possibly due to stress.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors show that there may be a trade-off between performance and quitting in strong incentives tournaments. They find that while low incentives do not give rise to quitting, (like in Eriksson et al, 2009), higher incentives increase both participation and performance but also lead to more drop-outs, especially when children run side-by-side. These behavioral analyses explain the quitting behavior in relation to the level of incentives through the comparisons of relative abilities.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Quitting and peer effects at work

2016

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S ABSTRACTQuitting and Peer Effects at Work * While peer effects have been shown to affect worker's productivity when workers are paid a fixed wage, there is little evidence on their influence on quitting decisions. This paper presents results from an experiment in which participants receive a piece-rate wage to perform a real-effort task. After completing a compulsory work period, the participants have the option at any time to continue working or quit. To study peer effects, we randomly assign participants to work alone or have one other worker in the room with them. When a peer is present, we manipulate the environment by giving either vague or precise feedback on the co-worker's output, and also vary whether the two workers can communicate. We find that allowing individuals to work with a co-worker present does not increase worker's productivity. However, the presence of a peer in all working conditions causes workers to quit at more similar times. When, and only when, communication is allowed, workers are significantly more likely to (1) stay longer if their partner is still working, and (2) work longer the more productive they are. We conclude that when workers receive a piece-rate wage, critical peer effects occur only when workers can communicate with each other.JEL Classification: C91, D83, J63, J28, J81

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Feedback and Incentives: Experimental Evidence

Cited by 94 publications

References 36 publications

Do women have more shame than men? An experiment on self-assessment and the shame of overestimating oneself

Do women have more shame than men? An experiment on self-assessment and the shame of overestimating oneself

Does Death Make Us All Equal? Conformism and Status-Seeking Under Mortality Salience

Quitting and peer effects at work

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