Can Being Competitive But Unsuccessful Harm You, Even More So If You Are A Woman?

We investigate the fairness views of impartial spectators towards workers who act or communicate competitively but are unsuccessful in a winner-take-all real-effort task. In an online experiment with over 5,800 participants, spectators show significantly less concern toward unsuccessful workers who voluntarily entered a competition for pay, behaved selfishly, or communicated in a dominant tone. There are two main drivers behind the spectators’ changes in financial redistributions towards low earners: firstly, spectators hold workers more accountable when they behave competitively, and secondly, spectators dislike if a worker communicates in a dominant style. We further find that unsuccessful male workers are treated harsher than female workers when workers’ displayed competitiveness is low. However, this gender gap is diminished when workers acted competitively, and both genders are shown equally low concern.