IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v84y2017i2p456-473.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sabotaging Another: Priming Competition Increases Cheating Behavior in Tournaments

Author

Listed:
  • Mary L. Rigdon
  • Alexander D'Esterre

Abstract

Trophy. Goal. Dominated. Does priming individuals with competitive concepts such as these influence the temptation to cheat? We utilize a standard laboratory cheating task in a tournament setting and test whether nonconscious priming impacts the nature of cheating behavior. The results demonstrate an asymmetry in a winner‐take‐all setting: a competitive prime does not increase cheating to improve one's own outcome, but does significantly increase the willingness of an individual to sabotage a competitor.

Suggested Citation

  • Mary L. Rigdon & Alexander D'Esterre, 2017. "Sabotaging Another: Priming Competition Increases Cheating Behavior in Tournaments," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(2), pages 456-473, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:84:y:2017:i:2:p:456-473
    DOI: 10.1002/soej.12232
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12232
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/soej.12232?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schwieren, Christiane & Weichselbaumer, Doris, 2010. "Does competition enhance performance or cheating? A laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 241-253, June.
    2. repec:wly:soecon:v:81:4:y:2015:p:1012-1024 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Daniele Fanelli, 2009. "How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(5), pages 1-11, May.
    4. Ahmed, Ali M. & Salas, Osvaldo, 2011. "Implicit influences of Christian religious representations on dictator and prisoner's dilemma game decisions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 242-246, May.
    5. David Cyranoski, 2009. "Hwang verdict imminent," Nature, Nature, vol. 461(7267), pages 1035-1035, October.
    6. Alison Abbott, 2013. "Disputed results a fresh blow for social psychology," Nature, Nature, vol. 497(7447), pages 16-16, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Azar, Ofer H. & Applebaum, Mark, 2020. "Do children cheat to be honored? A natural experiment on dishonesty in a math competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 143-157.
    2. Barile, Lory & Drouvelis, Michalis, 2024. "Priming and the gender gap in competitiveness," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1490, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Necker, Sarah, 2014. "Scientific misbehavior in economics," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 1747-1759.
    2. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 38-55, January.
    3. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status (preprint)," Working Papers halshs-01090241, HAL.
    4. Moritz A. Drupp & Menusch Khadjavi & Rudi Voss, 2024. "The Truth-Telling of Truth-Seekers: Evidence from Online Experiments with Scientists," CESifo Working Paper Series 10897, CESifo.
    5. Belot, Michèle & Schröder, Marina, 2013. "Sloppy work, lies and theft: A novel experimental design to study counterproductive behaviour," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 233-238.
    6. Jenny C Su & Chi-Yue Chiu & Wei-Fang Lin & Shigehiro Oishi, 2016. "Social Monitoring Matters for Deterring Social Deviance in Stable but Not Mobile Socio-Ecological Contexts," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-13, November.
    7. Valencia Caicedo, Felipe & Dohmen, Thomas & Pondorfer, Andreas, 2023. "Religion and cooperation across the globe," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 479-489.
    8. Hoffmann, Lisa, 2022. "Cooperation in the name of God? Experimental evidence from Ghana and Tanzania," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    9. Love, Peter E.D. & Ika, Lavagnon A. & Ahiaga-Dagbui, Dominic D., 2019. "On de-bunking ‘fake news’ in a post truth era: Why does the Planning Fallacy explanation for cost overruns fall short?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 397-408.
    10. Jeremy Hall & Ben R. Martin, 2019. "Towards a Taxonomy of Academic Misconduct: The Case of Business School Research," SPRU Working Paper Series 2019-02, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    11. Wu, Qin & Bayer, Ralph-C & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2020. "Conditional Pension Funds to Combat Cheating in Sporting Contests: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    12. Dhami, Sanjit & Wei, Mengxing & Mamidi, Pavan, 2024. "Religious identity, trust, reciprocity, and prosociality: Theory and evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    13. Robert J Warren II & Joshua R King & Charlene Tarsa & Brian Haas & Jeremy Henderson, 2017. "A systematic review of context bias in invasion biology," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-12, August.
    14. Jasper Brinkerink, 2023. "When Shooting for the Stars Becomes Aiming for Asterisks: P-Hacking in Family Business Research," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(2), pages 304-343, March.
    15. Frederique Bordignon, 2020. "Self-correction of science: a comparative study of negative citations and post-publication peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1225-1239, August.
    16. Hensel, Przemysław G., 2019. "Supporting replication research in management journals: Qualitative analysis of editorials published between 1970 and 2015," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 45-57.
    17. Cao, Qian & Li, Jianbiao & Niu, Xiaofei, 2022. "White lies in tournaments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    18. Glenn Dutcher & Daniela Glätzle-Rützler & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2016. "Don't hate the player, hate the game: Uncovering the foundations of cheating in contests," Working Papers 2016-29, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    19. Jeffrey A. Flory & Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2016. "The Effects of Wage Contracts on Workplace Misbehaviors: Evidence from a Call Center Natural Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 22342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Dato, Simon & Feess, Eberhard & Nieken, Petra, 2024. "Lying in competitive environments: Identifying behavioral impacts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:84:y:2017:i:2:p:456-473. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.