Does Competition Enhance Performance or Cheating? A Laboratory Experiment

28 Pages Posted: 23 May 2008

See all articles by Christiane Schwieren

Christiane Schwieren

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences

Doris Weichselbaumer

Johannes Kepler University Linz - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: January 2008

Abstract

In this paper we experimentally test whether competing for a desired reward does not only affect individuals' performance, but also their tendency to cheat. Recent doping scandals in sports as well as forgery and plagiarism scandals in academia have been partially explained bycompetitive pressures, which suggests a link between competition and cheating. In our experiment subjects conduct a task where they have the possibility to make use of illegitimate tools to better their results. We find that women react much stronger to competitive pressure by increasing their cheating activity while there is no overall sex difference in cheating. However, the effect of competition on women's cheating behavior is entirely due to the fact that women, on average, are doing worse with respect to the assigned task. Indeed we find that it is the ability of an individual to conduct a particular task and not sex that crucially affects the reaction to competition. Poor performers significantly increase their cheating behavior under competition which may be a face-saving strategy or an attempt to retain a chance of winning.

Keywords: cheating, piece rate, tournament, competition, experiment

JEL Classification: C91, J24, J31, M52

Suggested Citation

Schwieren, Christiane and Weichselbaumer, Doris, Does Competition Enhance Performance or Cheating? A Laboratory Experiment (January 2008). IZA Working Paper No. 3275, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1136437 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1136437

Christiane Schwieren (Contact Author)

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences ( email )

Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27
Barcelona, 08005
Spain

Doris Weichselbaumer

Johannes Kepler University Linz - Department of Economics ( email )

Altenbergerstrasse 69
A-4040 Linz, 4040
Austria
+43 732 2468 8240 (Phone)
+43 732 2468 9679 (Fax)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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