Rivals without a cause? Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives

Whether people compete or cooperate with each other has consequences for their own performance and that of organizations. To explain why people compete or cooperate, previous research has focused on two main factors: situational outcome structures and personality types. Here, we propose that—above and beyond these two factors—situational cues, such as the format in which people receive feedback, strongly affect whether they act competitively, cooperatively, or individualistically. Results of a laboratory experiment support our theorizing: After receiving ranking feedback, both students and experienced managers treated group situations with cooperative outcome structures as competitive and were in consequence willing to forgo guaranteed financial gains to pursue a—financially irrelevant—better rank. Conversely, in dilemma situations, feedback based on the joint group outcome led to more cooperation than ranking feedback. Our study contributes to research on competition, cooperation, interdependence theory, forced ranking, and the design of information environments.     

Perceptual learning in maze discriminations

In Experiment 1, rats were trained on a discrimination between rubber- and sandpaper-covered arms of a maze after one group had been pre-exposed to these intra-maze cues. Pre-exposure facilitated subsequent discrimination learning, unless the discrimination was made easier by adding further discriminative stimuli, when it now significantly retarded learning. In Experiment 2, rats were trained on an extra-maze spatial discrimination, again after one group, but not another, had been pre-exposed to the extra-maze landmarks. Here too, pre-exposure facilitated subsequent discrimination learning, unless the discrimination was made substantially easier by arranging that the two arms between which rats had to choose were always separated by 135°. The results of both experiments can be explained by supposing that perceptual learning depends on the presence of features common to S+ and S-.     

Effects of Social Demand on Reports of Self-Monitored Blood Glucose in Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that social demand could substantially affect reports of self-monitored blood glucose (BG) in adolescents with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Of 34 patients initially enrolled in the study, 10 were excluded because they did not bring any BG records with them to an outpatient clinic appointment. The remaining 24 patients were randomly assigned to either a low or high social demand condition that provided instructions for monitoring of BG for the week following the appointment. The subjects' BG records were quantified to provide frequency of measurement and mean reported BG for the week prior to and after the clinic visit. Five subjects did not return their BG records for the week following the intervention. The analyses were therefore based on the 19 subjects from whom complete records were obtained. The 12 subjects in the low social demand group and 7 subjects in the high social demand group were equivalent with regard to age, duration of diabetes, socioeconomic status, and glycosylated hemoglobin. Frequency of BG measurement was similar in both groups during both weeks. The mean BG value reported in the week prior to intervention was similar for the groups. However, analyses of the post-intervention BGs revealed that subjects in the low-demand group reported significantly higher BGs compared to pre-intervention and to subjects in the high-demand group. These findings suggest that self-monitoring and reporting of BG is a social behavior that is affected by the demand characteristics of the interpersonal patient-health provider relationship. Because optimal treatment planning for individuals with diabetes requires accurate BG records, care must be taken to interpret them in light of the social demand characteristics associated with clinical assessment.