{"title":"Do prosocial incentives motivate women to set higher goals and improve performance?","authors":"Yu Cao , C. Mónica Capra , Yuxin Su","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102659","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We investigate the effect of prosocial rewards on goal-setting and performance of women. We designed an online experiment where participants performed real-effort tasks. In our experimental treatments, participants were asked to set their own goals as to how many tasks they would perform within a fixed time frame. Contrary to previous research indicating that women tend to underperform due to setting lower goals for themselves compared to men, our study demonstrates that when rewards are prosocial, women set challenging, but achievable and their performance improves. Our results suggest that prosocial incentives within the goal-setting scheme can be an effective way to help women improve their performance.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":"99 ","pages":"Article 102659"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Economic Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487023000600","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We investigate the effect of prosocial rewards on goal-setting and performance of women. We designed an online experiment where participants performed real-effort tasks. In our experimental treatments, participants were asked to set their own goals as to how many tasks they would perform within a fixed time frame. Contrary to previous research indicating that women tend to underperform due to setting lower goals for themselves compared to men, our study demonstrates that when rewards are prosocial, women set challenging, but achievable and their performance improves. Our results suggest that prosocial incentives within the goal-setting scheme can be an effective way to help women improve their performance.
期刊介绍:
The Journal aims to present research that will improve understanding of behavioral, in particular psychological, aspects of economic phenomena and processes. The Journal seeks to be a channel for the increased interest in using behavioral science methods for the study of economic behavior, and so to contribute to better solutions of societal problems, by stimulating new approaches and new theorizing about economic affairs. Economic psychology as a discipline studies the psychological mechanisms that underlie economic behavior. It deals with preferences, judgments, choices, economic interaction, and factors influencing these, as well as the consequences of judgements and decisions for economic processes and phenomena. This includes the impact of economic institutions upon human behavior and well-being. Studies in economic psychology may relate to different levels of aggregation, from the household and the individual consumer to the macro level of whole nations. Economic behavior in connection with inflation, unemployment, taxation, economic development, as well as consumer information and economic behavior in the market place are thus among the fields of interest. The journal also encourages submissions dealing with social interaction in economic contexts, like bargaining, negotiation, or group decision-making. The Journal of Economic Psychology contains: (a) novel reports of empirical (including: experimental) research on economic behavior; (b) replications studies; (c) assessments of the state of the art in economic psychology; (d) articles providing a theoretical perspective or a frame of reference for the study of economic behavior; (e) articles explaining the implications of theoretical developments for practical applications; (f) book reviews; (g) announcements of meetings, conferences and seminars.