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No Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete When Competing against Self

Coren L. Apicella¹; Elif E. Demiral²; Johanna Mollerstrom³

¹ University of Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (e-mail: ) · ² Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030 (e-mail: ) · ³ Humboldt University and German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Mohrenstrasse 58, Berlin, Germany, and Research Institute for Industrial Economics (IFN) (e-mail: )

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

DOI

10.1257/aer.p20171019

Volume

107 (5)

Pages

136-140

Language

en

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