Abstract
Individual competitiveness is a personality trait of high importance. While substantial differences between individuals have been documented, the sources of this heterogeneity are not well understood. To contribute to this issue we conduct an incentivized field study with pre-school children. We assess the children's willingness to compete and relate the inclinations to ambitions and preferences of their parents. Parents’ ambitions concerning their children's success in professional life predict their children's competitiveness. In particular, children of highly ambitious parents tend to enter competition even if their chances to win are low. High ambitions are related to a relatively low socioeconomic background.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 87-102 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Journal of Economic Psychology |
| Volume | 67 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Aug 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
We gratefully acknowledge the many useful comments provided by participants at several conferences as well as the editor Lionel Page and two anonymous referees. We are indebted to the administrations of the two Kindergartens of our study for making this study possible and to Berno Büchel for excellent research assistance. This research is partly supported by the German Research Foundation ( Ni 1610/1-1 ) and the Swiss National Science Foundation ( 100019E_178317/1 ).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung | 100019E_178317/1, 178317 |
| Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | Ni 1610/1-1 |
Keywords
- Children
- Competition
- Field experiment
- Intergenerational transmission
- Parents
- Socialization
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