Performance curiosity
Carlos Alós-Ferrer,
Jaume García-Segarra and
Alexander Ritschel
Journal of Economic Psychology, 2018, vol. 64, issue C, 1-17
Abstract:
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.
Keywords: Social preferences; Egalitarian behavior; Expectations; Performance curiosity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487017300818
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:64:y:2018:i:c:p:1-17
DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2017.08.002
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read
More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().