Academic Research
Visceral Influences and Gender Difference in Competitiveness
Building upon the much-celebrated sex-specific hypothesis regarding visceral responses, we explore the potential impact of visceral responses on the well-replicated gender difference in competitiveness. In the first experiment, we document that exposure to the piece-rate and tournament tasks leads to an arousal of sex hormones among men, while women do not experience a similar response. This arousal is positively associated with competitiveness. In the second experiment, we observe that the gender gap in competitiveness is reduced by introducing a resting period. Our results contribute to the literature on gender differences in the willingness to compete and suggest that mitigating visceral influences is beneficial for promoting gender equality.
Paper Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2024.102788
Authors: Jingcheng Fu, Songfa Zhong
ABSTRACT
Building upon the much-celebrated sex-specific hypothesis regarding visceral responses, we explore the potential impact of visceral responses on the well-replicated gender difference in competitiveness. In the first experiment, we document that exposure to the piece-rate and tournament tasks leads to an arousal of sex hormones among men, while women do not experience a similar response. This arousal is positively associated with competitiveness. In the second experiment, we observe that the gender gap in competitiveness is reduced by introducing a resting period. Our results contribute to the literature on gender differences in the willingness to compete and suggest that mitigating visceral influences is beneficial for promoting gender equality.
Heuristic Centred-Belief Players
Strategic behavior often diverges from Nash-equilibrium, in particular in inexperienced play. Studying a class of games in which participants choose their payment and receive it as long as their opponent chooses a different amount, I show that none of the popular models of behavioural game theory predicts the predominant aggregate choice pattern consistently. And yet, noisy introspection (Goeree and Holt, 2004) readily accounts for about half of the individual observations. The reason for the apparent paradox and the mis-match of the aggregate data and the models is a disregarded behavioural type that makes up about 25% of the population. These 25% display a specific form of central-tendency bias, holding beliefs that peak in the centre of the option set and that are roughly symmetric. In addition, the players show a more heuristic process translating their belief into actions, as their choices cannot be explained readily by quantal responding. The behavioural pattern of a ‘centred belief’ in connection with boundedly-rational decision-making is present also in another prominent game from the literature on behavioural game theory, the 11–20 game. Finally, I show that classifying players as ‘heuristic centred-belief types’ by one game’s beliefs has predictive power for behaviour in the other game.
Paper Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2025.102806
Authors: Irenaeus Wolff
ABSTRACT
Strategic behavior often diverges from Nash-equilibrium, in particular in inexperienced play. Studying a class of games in which participants choose their payment and receive it as long as their opponent chooses a different amount, I show that none of the popular models of behavioural game theory predicts the predominant aggregate choice pattern consistently. And yet, noisy introspection (Goeree and Holt, 2004) readily accounts for about half of the individual observations. The reason for the apparent paradox and the mis-match of the aggregate data and the models is a disregarded behavioural type that makes up about 25% of the population. These 25% display a specific form of central-tendency bias, holding beliefs that peak in the centre of the option set and that are roughly symmetric. In addition, the players show a more heuristic process translating their belief into actions, as their choices cannot be explained readily by quantal responding. The behavioural pattern of a ‘centred belief’ in connection with boundedly-rational decision-making is present also in another prominent game from the literature on behavioural game theory, the 11–20 game. Finally, I show that classifying players as ‘heuristic centred-belief types’ by one game’s beliefs has predictive power for behaviour in the other game.
Performance Under Pressure and Its Impact on Compensation: Evidence From Professional Basketball
This paper investigates how performance in high- vs. low-pressure situations affects employee compensation. Leveraging sports as a natural laboratory, we analyze National Basketball Association (NBA) play-by-play data from 2004 to 2017 in combination with seasonal player salaries, using “clutch time”—the closing minutes during a game when the outcome is at stake and performance pressure is at its peak—as an objective criterion of performance pressure. Our regression analysis provides evidence of a salary premium for players who can excel under pressure. Whereas lower-paid players’ performance does not differ much by pressure level, higher-paid players show exceptionally strong performance during critical phases of a game. We demonstrate that the ability to excel under pressure is greatly valued in professional basketball, raising the question of whether this ability is compensated not only in other sports but also in other sectors of the labor market.
Paper Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487025000194?dgcid=rss_sd_all
Authors: Helmut M. Dietl, Steffen Q. Mueller, Marco Henriques Pereira, Markus Lang
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates how performance in high- vs. low-pressure situations affects employee compensation. Leveraging sports as a natural laboratory, we analyze National Basketball Association (NBA) play-by-play data from 2004 to 2017 in combination with seasonal player salaries, using “clutch time”—the closing minutes during a game when the outcome is at stake and performance pressure is at its peak—as an objective criterion of performance pressure. Our regression analysis provides evidence of a salary premium for players who can excel under pressure. Whereas lower-paid players’ performance does not differ much by pressure level, higher-paid players show exceptionally strong performance during critical phases of a game. We demonstrate that the ability to excel under pressure is greatly valued in professional basketball, raising the question of whether this ability is compensated not only in other sports but also in other sectors of the labor market.
Card or Dice? An Improved Experimental Approach to Measure Dishonesty
We introduce a modified die-roll experiment carried out in Germany and Cambodia to measure precise dishonesty rates, while the individual lie is not observable to the experimenter. Participants draw an envelope from a box containing many envelopes. Each envelope contains a card depicting a die number, which participants view in private and then deposit into a different box filled with many envelopes. The payoff of participants depends on the reported number, thereby creating an incentive to dishonestly report numbers with higher payoffs. Although the individual lie remains hidden from the experimenter, the drawn distribution of cards by a group of participants is known. Results of the modified experiment are compared to the classical die-roll task, in which individual dishonesty is private information and the outcome distribution is assumed, based on a probability function. The comparison reveals that the modified card method shows comparable levels of lying to the classical die-roll task among students, but not among smallholders in rural Cambodia. Considering the farmers, the number of liars is lower in the card task compared to the die-roll task. Although the individual lie is not observable, we find partially different dishonesty proportions between numbers comparing the two tasks. This suggests that the observability of the drawn distribution affects the costs of lying.
Paper Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487025000145?dgcid=rss_sd_all
Authors: Daniel Hermann, Selina Bruns, Oliver Mußhoff
ABSTRACT
We introduce a modified die-roll experiment carried out in Germany and Cambodia to measure precise dishonesty rates, while the individual lie is not observable to the experimenter. Participants draw an envelope from a box containing many envelopes. Each envelope contains a card depicting a die number, which participants view in private and then deposit into a different box filled with many envelopes. The payoff of participants depends on the reported number, thereby creating an incentive to dishonestly report numbers with higher payoffs. Although the individual lie remains hidden from the experimenter, the drawn distribution of cards by a group of participants is known. Results of the modified experiment are compared to the classical die-roll task, in which individual dishonesty is private information and the outcome distribution is assumed, based on a probability function. The comparison reveals that the modified card method shows comparable levels of lying to the classical die-roll task among students, but not among smallholders in rural Cambodia. Considering the farmers, the number of liars is lower in the card task compared to the die-roll task. Although the individual lie is not observable, we find partially different dishonesty proportions between numbers comparing the two tasks. This suggests that the observability of the drawn distribution affects the costs of lying.