Men Too Sometimes Shy Away from Competition: The Case of Team Competition

Recent experimental results indicate that women do not like competitive environments as much as men. This paper presents an experimental design giving participants the opportunity to enter a tournament as part of a team rather than alone. While a large and significant gender gap in entry in the individual tournament is found in line with the literature, no gender gap is found in entry in the team tournament. Women do not enter the tournament significantly more often when it is team-based but men enter significantly less as part of a team than alone. Changes in overconfidence as well as in risk, ambiguity and feedback aversion and the difference in men’s and women’s taste for uncertainty about their teammate’s ability all account for part of the disappearance of the gender gap in tournament entry. A remaining explanation is that being part of a team changes men’s and women’s taste for performing in a competitive environment. The results also suggest that men’s distaste for the team tournament is mainly caused by high-performing men not wanting to help a less deserving participant get higher payoffs.