UvA

Future seminars

 

2025-06-05 Boon Han Koh (University of Exeter)
The signals we give: Performance feedback, gender, and competition (with Alexander Coutts and Zahra Murad).
Room: A2.10, 16:00-17:15.
Feedback is a vital tool used by organizations and educators to improve performance, spark learning, and foster individual growth. Yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that many individuals are hesitant to provide others with feedback. Moreover, gender biases may influence its provision, with consequences for the representation of women in leadership and competitive professions. We study feedback provision under different conditions that vary the nature of performance signals, how instrumental they are for decision making, and gender of the recipient. Our results reveal that a substantial degree of feedback is withheld by advisors. Moreover, advisors are more likely to shield women from negative feedback in conditions characterized both by a lack of complete information about performance, and feedback that is not immediately instrumental for their decision-making. This effect is driven by male advisors. Our findings showcase how gender differences can arise in feedback provision, and highlight when these differences may be more likely to appear.

 

2025-06-12 Subhasish (Subho) M. Chowdhury (University of Sheffield )
Partisanship, Inequality, and Destructive Behavior: An Experiment with Republicans and Democrats (with Joo Young Jeon and Shakun D. Mago).
Room: E1.17, 15:00-17:00 (Double seminar).
Political partisanship and inequality are the two most divisive social identities in the contemporary USA. This study investigates experimentally the effects of partisanship and endowment inequality on nasty behavior. We implement an online Joy of Destruction game, where a subject can destroy another subject’s payoff at no cost or retaliation. We control whether the decision maker has access to information about the other, passive, subject’s political affiliation (Democrat or Republican) and monetary endowment (50% higher than decision maker’s). The results show that without any information, the destruction rate is similar to what is observed in literature, but knowing any of the two pieces of information increases destruction. The effects, however, vary substantially across political identity. While disadvantageous endowment inequality dominates the decision of the Republicans, the political identity-based destruction dominates the same for the Democrats. Although there are some gender effects, these results are robust across race, being the resident of a swing state, and the level of political opinion; and are supported by a text analysis of the comments of the subjects.