The Dark Side of Competition for Status (preprint)

Gary Charness (1) , David Masclet (2) , Marie Claire Villeval (3)

1 UC - University of California
2 CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management
3 GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne

Unethical behavior within organizations is not rare. We investigate experimentally the role of status-seeking behavior in sabotage and cheating activities aiming at improving one’s performance ranking in a flat-wage environment. We find that average effort is higher when individuals are informed about their relative performance. However, ranking feedback also favors disreputable behavior. Some individuals do not hesitate to incur a cost to improve their rank by sabotaging others’ work or by increasing artificially their own performance. Introducing sabotage opportunities has a strong detrimental effect on performance. Therefore, ranking incentives should be used with care. Inducing group identity discourages sabotage among peers but increases in-group rivalry.

Mots clés: doping; sabotage; feedback; Status; ranking; competitive preferences; experiment

Domaines: Economies et finances

Gary Charness, David Masclet, Marie Claire Villeval. The Dark Side of Competition for Status (preprint). 2014. ⟨halshs-01090241⟩