Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs

Christoph Huber, Anna Dreber, Jürgen Huber, Magnus Johannesson, Michael Kirchler, Utz Weitzel, Miguel Abellán, Xeniya Adayeva, Fehime Ceren Ay, Kai Barron, Zachariah Berry, Werner Bönte, Katharina Brütt, Muhammed Bulutay, Pol Campos-Mercade, Eric Cardella, Maria Almudena Claassen, Gert Cornelissen, Ian G. J. Dawson, Joyce Delnoij, Elif Demiral, Eugen Dimant, Johannes Theodor Doerflinger, Malte Dold, Cécile Emery, Lenka Fiala, Susann Fiedler, Eleonora Freddi, Tilman Fries, Agata Gasiorowska, Ulrich Glogowsky, Paul Gorny, Jeremy David Gretton, Antonia Grohmann, Sebastian Hafenbrädl, Michel Handgraaf, Yaniv Hanoch, Einav Hart, Max Hennig, Stanton Hudja, Mandy Hütter, Kyle Hyndman, Konstantinos Ioannidis, Ozan Isler, Sabrina Jeworrek, Daniel Jolles, Marie Juanchich, Raghabendra Pratap Kc, Menusch Khadjavi, Tamar Kugler, Shuwen Li, Brian Lucas, Vincent Mak, Mario Mechtel, Christoph Merkle, Ethan Andrew Meyers, Johanna Mollerstrom, Alexander Nesterov, Levent Neyse, Petra Nieken, Anne-Marie Nussberger, Helena Palumbo, Kim Peters, Angelo Pirrone, Xiangdong Qin, Rima Maria Rahal, Holger Rau, Johannes Rincke, Piero Ronzani, Yefim Roth, Ali Seyhun Saral, Jan Schmitz, Florian Schneider, Arthur Schram, Simeon Schudy, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Christiane Schwieren, Irene Scopelliti, Miroslav Sirota, Joep Sonnemans, Ivan Soraperra, Lisa Spantig, Ivo Steimanis, Janina Steinmetz, Sigrid Suetens, Andriana Theodoropoulou, Diemo Urbig, Tobias Vorlaufer, Joschka Waibel, Daniel Woods, Ofir Yakobi, Onurcan Yilmaz, Tomasz Zaleskiewicz, Stefan Zeisberger and Felix Holzmeister
Additional contact information
Jürgen Huber: d Department of Banking and Finance, University of Innsbruck , Innsbruck , Austria
Michael Kirchler: d Department of Banking and Finance, University of Innsbruck , Innsbruck , Austria
Utz Weitzel: g Tinbergen Institute , Amsterdam , The Netherlands
Miguel Abellán: h School of Public Affairs, Leuphana University Lueneburg , Lueneburg , Germany
Xeniya Adayeva: i HSE University , Saint Petersburg , Russia
Fehime Ceren Ay: k FAIR - The Choice Lab, Norwegian School of Economics , Bergen , Norway
Zachariah Berry: m Department of Organizational Behavior, Industrial and Labor Relations School, Cornell University , Ithaca , NY
Werner Bönte: o Institute for Development Strategies, Indiana University Bloomington , Bloomington , IN
Katharina Brütt: p Amsterdam School of Economics, University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands
Eric Cardella: s Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University , Lubbock , TX
Maria Almudena Claassen: t School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow , Glasgow , Scotland
Gert Cornelissen: v UPF Barcelona School of Management , Barcelona , Spain
Ian G. J. Dawson: w Centre for Risk Research, University of Southampton , Southampton , United Kingdom
Joyce Delnoij: x Section Economics, Wageningen University , Wageningen , The Netherlands
Eugen Dimant: aa University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia , PA
Johannes Theodor Doerflinger: bb Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz , Konstanz , Germany
Cécile Emery: dd University of Exeter Business School , Exeter , UK
Susann Fiedler: ff Institute for Cognition and Behavior, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business , Vienna , Austria
Tilman Fries: l WZB Berlin Social Science Center , Berlin , Germany
Agata Gasiorowska: gg Center for Research in Economic Behavior, Institute of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities , Wroclaw , Poland
Jeremy David Gretton: jj Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo , Waterloo , Canada
Antonia Grohmann: ll Danish Finance Institute , Denmark
Sebastian Hafenbrädl: mm Managing People in Organizations Department, IESE Business School , Barcelona , Spain
Michel Handgraaf: nn AMS Institute , Amsterdam , The Netherlands
Yaniv Hanoch: w Centre for Risk Research, University of Southampton , Southampton , United Kingdom
Einav Hart: oo School of Business, George Mason University , Fairfax , VA
Max Hennig: pp Psychology Department, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen , Tübingen , Germany
Stanton Hudja: qq Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University , Waco , TX
Mandy Hütter: pp Psychology Department, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen , Tübingen , Germany
Kyle Hyndman: rr University of Texas at Dallas , Dallas , TX
Konstantinos Ioannidis: ss CREED, University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands
Ozan Isler: tt School of Economics, University of Queensland , St Lucia , Australia
Daniel Jolles: ww Department of Psychology, University of Essex , Colchester , Uinted Kingdom
Marie Juanchich: ww Department of Psychology, University of Essex , Colchester , Uinted Kingdom
Raghabendra Pratap Kc: xx Rollins College , Winter Park , FL
Tamar Kugler: aaa Department of Management and Organizations, University of Arizona , Tucson , AZ
Shuwen Li: bbb Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai , China
Brian Lucas: m Department of Organizational Behavior, Industrial and Labor Relations School, Cornell University , Ithaca , NY
Vincent Mak: ccc Cambridge Judge Business School , Cambridge , Uinted Kingdom
Mario Mechtel: h School of Public Affairs, Leuphana University Lueneburg , Lueneburg , Germany
Ethan Andrew Meyers: jj Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo , Waterloo , Canada
Johanna Mollerstrom: eee Research Institute for Industrial Economics (IFN) , Stockholm , Sweden
Levent Neyse: fff DIW , Berlin , Germany
Anne-Marie Nussberger: hhh Center for Humans and Machines, Max Planck Institute for Human Development , Berlin , Germany
Helena Palumbo: u Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra , Barcelona , Spain
Kim Peters: dd University of Exeter Business School , Exeter , UK
Angelo Pirrone: iii Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics and Political Science , London , Uinted Kingdom
Xiangdong Qin: bbb Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai , China
Rima Maria Rahal: jjj Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods , Bonn , Germany
Holger Rau: kkk University of Göttingen , Göttingen , Germany
Johannes Rincke: lll Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg , Nürnberg , Germany
Piero Ronzani: mmm International Security and Development Center , Berlin , Germany
Yefim Roth: nnn University of Haifa , Haifa , Israel
Florian Schneider: ppp Department of Economics, University of Zurich , Zurich , Switzerland
Maurice E. Schweitzer: rrr The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia , PA
Christiane Schwieren: sss University of Heidelberg , Heidelberg , Germany
Irene Scopelliti: ttt Bayes Business School, City University of London , London , Uinted Kingdom
Miroslav Sirota: ww Department of Psychology, University of Essex , Colchester , Uinted Kingdom
Joep Sonnemans: ss CREED, University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands
Ivo Steimanis: www Working Group Sustainable Use of Natural Resources, University of Marburg , Germany
Janina Steinmetz: ttt Bayes Business School, City University of London , London , Uinted Kingdom
Andriana Theodoropoulou: ww Department of Psychology, University of Essex , Colchester , Uinted Kingdom
Tobias Vorlaufer: zzz Institute of Environmental Systems Research and Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Osnabruck University , Osnabruck , Germany
Joschka Waibel: vvv Department of Economics, University of Essex , Colchester , Uinted Kingdom
Daniel Woods: c Department of Economics, University of Innsbruck , Innsbruck , Austria
Ofir Yakobi: jj Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo , Waterloo , Canada
Onurcan Yilmaz: aaaa Department of Psychology, Kadir Has University , Istanbul , Turkey
Tomasz Zaleskiewicz: gg Center for Research in Economic Behavior, Institute of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities , Wroclaw , Poland
Stefan Zeisberger: bbbb Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zürich , Zürich , Switzerland
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Katharina Brütt

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023, vol. 120, issue 23, e2215572120

Abstract:

Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on the same hypothesis is design heterogeneity—variation in true effect sizes across various reasonable experimental research protocols. To provide further evidence on whether competition affects moral behavior and to examine whether the generalizability of a single experimental study is jeopardized by design heterogeneity, we invited independent research teams to contribute experimental designs to a crowd-sourced project. In a large-scale online data collection, 18,123 experimental participants were randomly allocated to 45 randomly selected experimental designs out of 95 submitted designs. We find a small adverse effect of competition on moral behavior in a meta-analysis of the pooled data. The crowd-sourced design of our study allows for a clean identification and estimation of the variation in effect sizes above and beyond what could be expected due to sampling variance. We find substantial design heterogeneity—estimated to be about 1.6 times as large as the average standard error of effect size estimates of the 45 research designs—indicating that the informativeness and generalizability of results based on a single experimental design are limited. Drawing strong conclusions about the underlying hypotheses in the presence of substantive design heterogeneity requires moving toward much larger data collections on various experimental designs testing the same hypothesis.

Keywords: competition; moral behavior; metascience; generalizability; experimental design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2215572120 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs (2023)
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:nas:journl:v:120:y:2023:p:e2215572120

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by PNAS Product Team ().