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The impact of peer pressure on effort and cheating: An experimental approach

Last registered on September 10, 2021
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The impact of peer pressure on effort and cheating: An experimental approach
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0008201
Initial registration date
September 07, 2021

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 09, 2021, 7:18 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
September 10, 2021, 2:37 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
New Zealand
Region
Wellington
Country
Russian Federation
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Thomas Dudek
Affiliation
University of Zurich
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Yuriy Timofeyev
PI Affiliation
HSE University
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Eberhard Feess
PI Affiliation
Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2021-06-01
End date
2021-10-02
Keywords
Behavior
Additional Keywords
Dishonesty, cheating, peer pressure, online experiment, real-performance task
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
We plan to test experimentally the impact of peer effects in groups. The payoff of both group members is identical and depends on their aggregated performance. Subjects are randomly assigned to groups of two and perform a real-effort task sequentially. We consider two real effort tasks, a tedious task (counting the occurrence of letters in senseless paragraphs) and an intellectually challenging task (solving Raven’s matrices).
For each of the two real effort tasks, we perform two treatments: In both treatments, we distinguish between a first mover (FM) and a second mover (SM). FMs can never misreport their actual performance. In the first treatment, SMs will be informed about the performance and sex of FMs before they perform the task. Identical to FMs, SMs cannot misreport their performance in this treatment. In the second treatment, SMs will learn the FMs actual performance and sex only after they also performed the task. Thereafter, SMs will have the opportunity to misreport their own performance.
Our experiment extends the analysis of peer effects to situations in which the interests of group members are fully aligned. Our original hypotheses before we performed a pilot were as follows:
(i) In the first treatment, the actual performance of SMs increases in the performance of first movers. This effect is more pronounced for the challenging task.
(ii) In the second treatment, the reported performance of SMs (and hence their degree of misreporting) increases in the performance of first movers. This effect is more pronounced for the challenging task.
Our pilots, however, suggests that all of our hypotheses will be rejected by the data.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Dudek, Thomas, Eberhard Feess and Yuriy Timofeyev. 2021. "The impact of peer pressure on effort and cheating: An experimental approach." AEA RCT Registry. September 10. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.8201-1.2000000000000002
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2021-09-13
Intervention End Date
2021-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Our primary outcome is always the regression coefficient for the FMs’ performance on the SMs’ performance. For all our analyses, we will run regressions with different combinations of covariates as robustness checks.
(i.a) Treatment 1: We run regressions of the SMs’ actual performance in Counting Letters as the dependent variable on the actual performance of FMs in the same task.
(i.b) Treatment 1: We run regressions of the SMs’ actual performance in Raven’s matrices as the dependent variable on the actual performance of the FMs in the same task.
(ii.a) Treatment 2: We run regressions of the SMs reported performance in Counting Letters as the dependent variable on the FMs’ actual performance in the same task
(ii.b) Treatment 2: We run regressions of the SMs reported performance in Raven’s matrices as the dependent variable on the FMs’ actual performance in the same task.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
(i) Our first secondary outcome is the comparison between FM performance and SM performance in treatment 1.
(ii) Our second secondary outcome is how demographics and personal attitudes influence the behavior. We will collect data on sex, age, education, personal income, and the traits risk tolerance and competitiveness.
(iii) Our third secondary outcome is the comparison between the impacts of the FMs performance in Counting Letters compared to Raven’s matrices.
(iv) Our fourth secondary outcome is the comparison of differences in actual/reported performance of SMs who had a same-sex or opposite-sex teammate.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experiment will be conducted online and participants will be recruited using Prolific.
For the tedious task, we use a task for which participants count the occurrence of letters in senseless paragraphs. For the intellectually challenging task, we use Raven’s matrices. We adopt a between-subject design, i.e. each participant performs just one real effort task as either the First-Mover (FM) or Second-Mover (SM). We adopt a two-by-two design with the two variables “misreporting for SM possible/ misreporting for SM not possible” and “tedious task/intellectually challenging task”. In the treatment with misreporting possibility for SMs, SMs will learn about this possibility only after they have worked on the real effort task. This excludes that the misreporting possibility influences the actual performance.
We will run the experiments with the tedious and the intellectually challenging task separately. FMs will perform the task first, and their performance will be utilized for determining whether the average performance is larger with or without information on the partner’s performance. SMs will then be randomly assigned to FMs.
Details:
Subjects will have nine minutes to work on counting letters or to work on Raven’s matrices. The chance of receiving a fixed bonus payment of GBP 1.75 increases by 2 percentage points for each correctly counted letter or for each correctly solved matrix (depending on the assigned treatment). A pre-test showed that the expected payoff is then approximately the same for both tasks. Our payoff structure ensures that the marginal financial benefit from each correctly solved task is independent of the performance of the partner. This means that any impact of the FMs performance can be attributed to peer effects.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
We will perform the treatments for the tedious and the challenging tasks separately. Furthermore, FMs will perform the task before SMs. Still, our matching procedure ensures full random assignment as all participants receive an identical HIT when they decide to take part in the experiment.
Randomization Unit
Individual. No clustering.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
0
Sample size: planned number of observations
1040 individuals, thereof 520 first-movers and 520 second-movers
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
130 second-movers per treatment who are each matched sequentially with a first-mover.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Human Ethics Committee Victoria University of Wellington
IRB Approval Date
2021-06-01
IRB Approval Number
29506
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials