Does Guilt Affect Performance? Evidence from Penalty Kicks in Soccer

Caspi, Itamar and Mazar, Yuval and Michelson, Noam and Tsur, Shay (2018): Does Guilt Affect Performance? Evidence from Penalty Kicks in Soccer.

Abstract

Does guilt affect performance? Exploiting a novel measure of the justification of penalty calls, we find that unjustified penalty calls negatively affect penalty conversion rates, and that this effect increases with social norms of trust. Exploiting the variance arising from players who do not play in their countries of origin by including the norms of both the league and the kickers’ countries of origin, we separate the constraints on egoism into two categories: internal sanctions, such as guilt, and external sanctions, such as shame. We find that both guilt and shame affect the performance of penalty kickers.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Guilt, performance, soccer, football, penalty kicks, Europe.
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D81 - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty; L - Industrial Organization > L8 - Industry Studies: Services > L83 - Sports ; Gambling ; Restaurants ; Recreation ; Tourism

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