Other-Regarding or Self-Fulfilling: An Experiment on Working after Disappointment

Abstract

It is a common sense that an individual would feel disappointed when his work results overpass other team members while his final reward is determined by the poorest performance of the group. One question is raised: How people decide the level of their working effort in the next period while having experienced disappointing feeling in the previous one? In this study, we try to test two hypotheses of the potential impacts of disappoint feeling: disappointment aversion and self-achievement. To do so, we conducted a laboratory experiment by applying a classical repeated minimum effort game under a real effort task at India. We use two different measurements of disappointment to estimate the effort supply of this individual in the next period. The study finds the existence of both the disappointment aversion and self-fulfillment seeking motivation for an individual under different scenarios. The effort supply does depend negatively on the disappoint feeling that has been shortly experienced, proving the motivation of disappoint aversion. Nevertheless, the subject’s motivation of self-achievement will dominate the behavior after having experienced continuously worsening disappointed feeling and therefore, one’s effort supply in the next period does not doomed to rely any more on the performance of one’s team members.