Do overconfident workers cooperate less? : the relationship between overconfidence and cooperation in team production

Vanessa Mertins and Wolfgang Hoffeld

The tendency to underestimate others' relative performance compared to one's own is widespread among individuals in all work environments. We examine the relationship between, and the driving forces behind, individual overconfidence and voluntary cooperation in team production. Our experimental data suggest an indirect and gender-specific link: Overconfident men hold more optimistic beliefs about coworkers' cooperativeness than men who lack confidence, and are accordingly significantly more cooperative, whereas overconfidence, beliefs, and cooperativeness are not correlated in women.

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Year of publication:	2013
Authors:	Mertins, Vanessa ; Hoffeld, Wolfgang
Publisher:	Trier : IAAEU
Subject:	team production \| public good \| experiment \| real effort \| cooperation \| gender \| overconfidence \| belief \| Arbeitsgruppe \| Team \| Experiment \| Kooperation \| Cooperation \| Öffentliche Güter \| Public goods \| Selbstevaluation \| Self-assessment \| Theorie \| Theory \| Vertrauen \| Confidence \| Geschlecht \| Gender \| Soziales Netzwerk \| Social network