Gender Differences to Relative Performance Feedback: A Field Experiment in Education

Individuals care about both their absolute performance and their performance relative to others. For example, workers satisfaction is affected not only by their nominal wage but also by the comparison of their salaries relative to colleagues. We analyze the effect of providing relative performance feedback using a field experiment with university students. Untreated students misplace themselves in the grade distribution. Poor performing students over report their placement (they say that they have a better position in the classroom ranking than they actually have). On the other hand, good students (especially women) under place themselves: they report that they don’t perform as well as they actually do. We experimentally change the information that treated students have, so they know exactly how they perform relative to their peers. We find that the information feedback has asymmetric effects for men and women. Treated men report higher satisfaction with their GPA while treated women report less satisfaction, regardless of their position in the grade distribution. We also show that this non-monetary incentive caused a decrease in women academic performance. Two possible channels may explain our results: women may shy away from competition and they face an increasing marginal cost of effort. More information is not always beneficial for everybody.