Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/200515 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Citation: 
[Journal:] Experimental Economics [ISSN:] 1573-6938 [Volume:] 20 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Heidelberg [Year:] 2017 [Pages:] 506-530
Publisher: 
Springer, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Individual willingness to enter competitive environments predicts career choices and labor market outcomes. Meanwhile, many people experience competitive contexts as stressful. We use two laboratory experiments to investigate whether factors related to stress can help explain individual differences in tournament entry. Experiment 1 studies whether stress responses (measured as salivary cortisol) to taking part in a mandatory tournament predict individual willingness to participate in a voluntary tournament. We find that competing increases stress levels. This cortisol response does not predict tournament entry for men but is positively and significantly correlated with choosing to enter the tournament for women. In Experiment 2, we exogenously induce physiological stress using the cold-pressor task. We find a positive causal effect of stress on tournament entry for women but no effect for men. Finally, we show that although the effect of stress on tournament entry differs between the genders, stress reactions cannot explain the well-documented gender difference in willingness to compete.
Subjects: 
Competition
Gender differences
Experiment
Cortisol
Stress
JEL: 
C90
C91
J16
J71
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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