Psychological Momentum and Gender

Danny Cohen-Zada (), Alex Krumer and Zeev Shtudiner
Additional contact information
Danny Cohen-Zada: Ben Gurion University

No 9845, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We exploit a natural experiment in which two professionals compete in a one-stage contest without strategic motives and where one contestant has a clear exogenous psychological momentum advantage over the other in order to estimate the causal effect of psychological momentum on performance. We find that men's performance is significantly affected by psychological momentum, while women's is not. This result is robust to different specifications and estimation strategies. Our results are in line with evidence in the biological literature that testosterone, which is known to enhance performance of both men and women, commonly increases following victory and decreases following loss only among men. Implications of our findings for contest design are also discussed.

Keywords: psychological momentum; contest; gender differences; performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J24 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2016-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2017, 135, 66-81

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Journal Article: Psychological momentum and gender (2017)
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