%0 Generic
%A Buckert, Magdalena 
%A Schwieren, Christiane 
%A Kudielka, Brigitte M. 
%A Fiebach ,  Christian J. 
%C Heidelberg
%D 2015
%F heidok:18748
%K competition, decision making, stress, heart rate, testosterone, economic tournament 
%R 10.11588/heidok.00018748
%T How stressful are economic competitions in the lab? An investigation with physiological measures 
%U https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/18748/
%V 0593
%X Competition is ubiquitous in economic life.  Yet, negative consequences of competitive environments have been reported and  everyday experience suggests that  competitive situations  can  be  very  stressful.  It is, however,  an open question whether or not  economic competitions  in the laboratory  indeed elicit  physiological stress  reactions. Our study examined the  subjectively perceived stress  and  the physiological changes induced by a well-established economic laboratory competition paradigm  (first used in Niederle and Vesterlund 2007)  in a mixed-gender sample of   105 healthy participants. A mental arithmetic task was performed first under a piece rate  (i.e., non-competitive)  payment scheme and afterwards under a tournament condition. In a third round,  participants decided how to be paid (i.e., piece rate or tournament). Our results indicate that compared to a control group, which performed only the non-competitive condition,  the  competitive game condition  indeed elicited subjective and physiological reactions that are indicative of mild stress. Furthermore, reactions that are thought to reflect an active coping  style were  related to the self-selection into competition in the third round of the game. We speculate that real-life economic competitions might be  even  stronger stressors and  the way  how people cope with this kind of stress might be related to competitiveness in real-life economic contexts.