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Choking under pressure and gender: Evidence from professional tennis

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  • Cohen-Zada, Danny
  • Krumer, Alex
  • Rosenboim, Mosi
  • Shapir, Offer Moshe

Abstract

We exploit a unique setting in which two professionals compete in a real-life tennis contest with high monetary rewards in order to assess how men and women respond to competitive pressure. Comparing their performance in low-stakes versus high-stakes situations, we find that men consistently choke under competitive pressure, but with regard to women the results are mixed. Furthermore, even if women show a drop in performance in the more crucial stages of the match, it is in any event about 50% smaller than that of men. These findings are robust to different specifications and estimation strategies.

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  • Cohen-Zada, Danny & Krumer, Alex & Rosenboim, Mosi & Shapir, Offer Moshe, 2017. "Choking under pressure and gender: Evidence from professional tennis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 176-190.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:61:y:2017:i:c:p:176-190
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2017.04.005
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    Cited by:

    1. Bar-Eli, Michael & Krumer, Alex & Morgulev, Elia, 2020. "Ask not what economics can do for sports - Ask what sports can do for economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    2. Helena Fornwagner & Monika Pompeo & Nina Serdarevic, 2020. "Him or her? Choosing competition on behalf of someone else," Discussion Papers 2020-13, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    3. Harb-Wu, Ken & Krumer, Alex, 2019. "Choking under pressure in front of a supportive audience: Evidence from professional biathlon," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 246-262.
    4. Dainis Zegners & Uwe Sunde & Anthony Strittmatter, 2020. "Decisions and Performance Under Bounded Rationality: A Computational Benchmarking Approach," Papers 2005.12638, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.
    5. Bühren, Christoph & Steinberg, Philip J., 2019. "The impact of psychological traits on performance in sequential tournaments: Evidence from a tennis field experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 12-29.
    6. Böheim, René & Grübl, Dominik & Lackner, Mario, 2019. "Choking under pressure – Evidence of the causal effect of audience size on performance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 76-93.
    7. Viktor Bozhinov & Nora Grote, 2019. "Performance under Pressure on the Court: Evidence from Professional Volleyball," Working Papers 1901, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    8. Nicolas Houy & Jean-Philippe Nicolaï & Marie Claire Villeval, 2020. "Always doing your best? Effort and performance in dynamic settings," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 89(3), pages 249-286, October.
    9. Iqbal, Hamzah & Krumer, Alex, 2017. "Discouragement Effect and Intermediate Prizes in Multi-Stage Contests: Evidence from Tennis’s Davis Cup," Economics Working Paper Series 1719, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    10. Klein Teeselink, Bouke & Potter van Loon, Rogier J.D. & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2020. "Incentives, performance and choking in darts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 38-52.
    11. Krumer, Alex, 2020. "Pressure versus ability: Evidence from penalty shoot-outs between teams from different divisions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    12. Massimiliano Ferraresi & Gianluca Gucciardi, 2020. "Team performance and audience: experimental evidence from the football sector," Working papers 94, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    13. Miller, Danny & Pastoriza, David & Plante, Jean-François, 2019. "Conditioning competitive risk: Competitors’ rank proximity and relative ability," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 161-175.
    14. Sanne J. Joustra & Ruud H. Koning & Alex Krumer, 2021. "Order Effects in Elite Gymnastics," De Economist, Springer, vol. 169(1), pages 21-35, February.
    15. Pikos, Anna Katharina & Straub, Alexander, 2019. "Mind the absent gap: Gender-specific competitiveness in non-professional sports," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-652, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    16. Cohen-Zada, Danny & Krumer, Alex & Shapir, Offer Moshe, 2018. "Testing the effect of serve order in tennis tiebreak," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 106-115.
    17. Simcha Avugos & Ofer H. Azar & Nadav Gavish & Eran Sher & Michael Bar-Eli, 2019. "Goal center width, how to count sequences, and the gambler's fallacy in soccer penalty shootouts," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(1), pages 98-108, January.
    18. Hendrik Sonnabend, 2020. "On discouraging environments in team contests: Evidence from top‐level beach volleyball," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(6), pages 986-997, September.
    19. Bucciol, Alessandro & Castagnetti, Alessandro, 2020. "Choking under pressure in archery," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    20. Bühren, Christoph & Kadriu, Valon, 2020. "The fairness of long and short ABBA-sequences: A basketball free-throw field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    21. Iqbal, Hamzah & Krumer, Alex, 2019. "Discouragement effect and intermediate prizes in multi-stage contests: Evidence from Davis Cup," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 364-381.
    22. Christoph Buehren & Lisa Traeger, 2020. "The Impact of Psychological Pressure and Psychological Traits on Performance – Experimental Evidence of Penalties in Handball," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202043, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    23. Cohen-Zada, Danny & Krumer, Alex & Shapir, Offer Moshe, 2017. "Take a Chance on ABBA," IZA Discussion Papers 10878, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    24. Anna Katharina Pikos & Alexander Straub, 2020. "Mind the Absent Gap: Gender-Specific Competitive Behavior in Nonprofessional Sports," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(3), pages 215-233, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender; Performance; Competitive pressure; Tennis; Choking;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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