Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Series: Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers
Creation-Date: 2014-07-07
Number: 14-083/I
Author-Name: Thomas Buser
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Amsterdam
Title: The Impact of Losing in a Competition on the Willingness to seek Further Challenges
Abstract: How do people react to setbacks and successes? I introduce a new measure of challenge-seeking to determine the effect of winning and losing in a competition on the willingness to seek further challenges. Participants in a lab experiment compete in two-person tournaments and are then informed of their score and the outcome of the competition. Conditional on the score, winning or losing is random. Participants then have to decide on a performance target for a second round: the higher the target, the higher the potential reward, but participants who do not reach the target earn nothing. I find that, conditional on first round scores, losers go for a more challenging target but perform worse, leading to lower earnings and a higher probability of failure. These findings could have important implications for our understanding of individual career paths. Early outcomes coul d alter the probability of success and failure in the long term.
Classification-JEL: C91, D03, J16, J01
Keywords: competition, challenge seeking, career decisions, laboratory experiment, gender
File-Url: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/14083.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 1457820 bytes
Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20140083