Gender differences in sabotage: the role of uncertainty and beliefs

Abstract

We study gender differences in relation to performance and sabotage in competitions. While we find no systematic gender differences in performance in the real effort task, we observe a strong gender gap in sabotage choices in our experiment. This gap is rooted in the uncertainty about the opponent's sabotage: in the absence of information about the opponent's sabotage choice, males expect to suffer from sabotage to a higher degree than females and choose higher sabotage levels themselves. If beliefs are exogenously aligned by implementing sabotage via strategy method, the gender gap in sabotage choices disappears. Moreover, providing a noisy signal about the sabotage level from which subjects might suffer leads to an endogenous alignment of beliefs and eliminates the gender gap in sabotage. JEL-Codes: J160, M120, C910.

Beliefs about Gender

“…For each category, participants are again asked to estimate their own and their partner's individual part 2 score out of 10 on each of the 10-question banks in part 2. 8,9 Part 3: Question-Level Belief Elicitation.-We collect data on question-level beliefs from participants. Participants revisit questions seen in earlier parts of the experiment.…”

“…This gives us a set of bank-specific beliefs of a known gender partner for every participant in the UCSB experiment, while still allowing for some groups to not know each other's gender during the place in line game. We exploit this variation in Section V 9. At OSU and Harvard, we used a fixed 40-question block of questions for part 1 and a fixed 40-question block of questions for part 2.…”

Determining the Effects of Incentive Provision and Work Commitment on School Principals in West Sumatera

“…This was in line with (Exley & Kessler, 2022), where women were less likely than men to selfpromote for office. Electioneering sabotage was also capable of developing in a competitive climate, with the females less likely to engage in sabotaging other people than the males (Chowdhury & Gürtler, 2015;Dato & Nieken, 2020).…”

Unethical employee behavior against coworkers following unkind management treatment: An experimental analysis

“…Even though the survey experiment is not directly comparable with the lab results, the difference between the colleague and unknown coworker settings supports this suggestion. Given that many workplace structures rely on tournament environments to increase work effort (Bull et al, 1987; Harbring et al, 2007; Lazear & Rosen, 1981) and that competitive markets are known to be an ideal breeding ground for unethical behavior (Cartwright & Menezes, 2014; Charness et al, 2014; Dato & Nieken, 2019, 2014; Harbring & Irlenbusch, 2011), the investigation of this specific setting seems to be relevant. Nevertheless, our study definitely raises a number of questions for further research.…”