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

Although men are more likely than women to enter into an individual tournament, women and men enter team-based tournaments at roughly the same rates. This result is not driven by an increase in women’s willingness to compete as part of a team, but rather by a decrease in men’s willingness to enter team-based tournaments.

• For individual tournaments (where participants could earn a higher compensation by winning against an opponent) 85% of male participants decided to participate compared to 51% of females. This difference cannot be explained by a performance gap, since women performed as well as men in completing the task. 
• 95% of high-performing men and 59% of high-performing women decided to enter the individual tournament, suggesting a missed opportunity for high performing women to win.
• Low-performing men were also more likely to enter the individual tournament compared to low-performing women, even though it was not optimal for them to do so. 
• In team-based tournaments (where participants were paired with an unknown teammate to compete against two unknown opponents), there is no statistically significant gender gap in willingness to compete.
• High-performing men change their willingness to compete in team tournaments relative to individual tournaments. While 95% choose to enter individual tournaments, this proportion drops to 47% for team-based tournaments. However, 84% of high-performing men will choose to compete in a team tournament if they know that their teammate is of the same skill level as themselves.
• Low-performing men enter individual and team tournaments at the same rate, which suggests that poor performers are not affected by this intervention.
• High-performing women are slightly more likely to enter the team tournament than the individual tournament but this difference is not statistically significant. Additionally, the same fraction of high-performing women are willing to compete regardless of whether the teammate has their same skill level or if this information is unknown.
• The reluctance of high-performing men to enter team-based tournaments appears to be driven by a fear of having a free-riding teammate.

While more men than women entered individual tournaments, there was no gender gap in entering team tournaments.

39 men and 37 women took part in this experiment. Participants were given several tasks to complete sequentially, of which two would be randomly chosen for payment. Each task offered a different remuneration scheme and consisted of completing math exercises. In task 1 (piece rate), participants were given a three-minute addition exercise, and paid 50 cents per correct answer. In task 2 (individual tournament), participants were given a three-minute addition exercise and received 1€ per correct answer if the participant answered more questions than an unknown opponent. In task 3, participants were given a choice between the piece rate and the individual tournament. In task 4, participants chose between the piece rate and the team tournament. Teams were composed of two members who did not know whether they were matched with a man or a woman or the skill level of their teammate. In task 5, individuals chose between the piece rate and a team tournament but were told that they would be matched with a teammate with a past performance close to theirs.