The provision of relative performance feedback information: an experimental analysis of performance and happiness

Ghazala Azmat and Nagore Iriberri

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on individuals’ performance and affective response, under both piece-rate and flat-rate incentives. In a laboratory setup, agents perform a real effort task and when receiving feedback, they are asked to rate their happiness, arousal and feeling of dominance. Control subjects learn only their absolute performance, while the treated subjects additionally learn the average performance in the session. Under piece-rate, performance is 17 percent higher when relative performance feedback is provided. Furthermore, although feedback increases the performance independent of the content (i.e., performing above or below the average), the content is determinant for the affective response. When subjects are treated, the inequality in the happiness and the feeling of dominance between those subjects performing above and below the average increases by 8 and 6 percentage points, respectively. Under flat-rate, we do not find any effect on either of the outcome variables.

Keywords: relative performance; feedback; piece-rate; flat-rate; happiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D00 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2012-01-24
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121935/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Provision of Relative Performance Feedback Information: An Experimental Analysis of Performance and Happiness (2015)
Working Paper: The Provision of Relative Performance Feedback Information: An Experimental Analysis of Performance and Happiness (2012)
Working Paper: The provision of relative performance feedback information: An experimental analysis of performance and happiness (2010)
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:ehl:lserod:121935

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().