TY - JOUR
T1 - Performance curiosity
AU - Alós-Ferrer, Carlos
AU - García-Segarra, Jaume
AU - Ritschel, Alexander
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Anja Achtziger, Gary Charness, Urs Fischbacher, Uri Gneezy, David Laibson, Daniel Navarro-Martínez, the co-editor Stefan Schulz-Hardt, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Alexander Ritschel was financed by the Research Unit “Psychoeconomics” (FOR 1882) of the German Research Foundation (DFG). The Department of Economics at the University of Cologne gratefully acknowledges financial support from the DFG to build the Cologne Laboratory for Economic Research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/2
Y1 - 2018/2
N2 - We show that performance curiosity – the desire to know one's own (relative) performance – can trump inequality aversion. In two experiments (combined N=450), participants chose between an equal allocation and a performance-based one after generating surplus in a real-effort task. In the experimental treatment, choosing an equal allocation came at the cost of not knowing the own performance, which led to a substantial increase of performance-based choices in comparison with the control treatment. The effect seems especially pronounced for women, but the gender effect is due to a difference in expectations regarding performance. Interestingly, the manipulation equalized the proportion of equal allocation choices between males and females compensating for their difference in expectations.
AB - We show that performance curiosity – the desire to know one's own (relative) performance – can trump inequality aversion. In two experiments (combined N=450), participants chose between an equal allocation and a performance-based one after generating surplus in a real-effort task. In the experimental treatment, choosing an equal allocation came at the cost of not knowing the own performance, which led to a substantial increase of performance-based choices in comparison with the control treatment. The effect seems especially pronounced for women, but the gender effect is due to a difference in expectations regarding performance. Interestingly, the manipulation equalized the proportion of equal allocation choices between males and females compensating for their difference in expectations.
KW - 2360
KW - 3020
KW - Egalitarian behavior
KW - Expectations
KW - Performance curiosity
KW - Social preferences
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U2 - 10.1016/j.joep.2017.08.002
DO - 10.1016/j.joep.2017.08.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85029146547
VL - 64
SP - 1
EP - 17
JO - Journal of Economic Psychology
JF - Journal of Economic Psychology
SN - 0167-4870
ER -