Emotions in tournaments

Abstract

We introduce a concept of emotions that emerge when agents compare their own performance with the performances of other agents. Assuming heterogeneity among the agents the interplay of emotions and incentives is analyzed within the framework of rank-order tournaments, which are frequently used in practice. Tournaments seem to be an appropriate starting point for this concept because a tournament induces incentives by making agents compare themselves with their opponents. We identify certain conditions under which the principal benefits from emotional agents. Furthermore, the concept of emotions is used to explain the puzzling findings on the oversupply of effort in experimental tournaments.