Competing With Tigers for Tenure

Thanks to the Incoherent Ponderer for pointing out “The Tiger Woods Effect,” an interesting article at Slate about a study by Jennifer Brown, a University of California at Berkeley researcher who looked at golf and found that the presence of the superstar Tiger Woods in a competition led his opponents to perform more poorly.

The reporter, Joel Waldfogel, explains the significance of Brown’s findings for the “nongolfing world”:

It’s generally agreed that people work harder when they are paid for performance. Anyone who has ever languished in a Paris cafe—where service compris translates roughly as “the Republic of France mandates a minimum 15 percent tip regardless of service quality“—can appreciate the power of incentives. But the effects of incentives appear to be muted when the incentives are based on relative performance and the competition is tough. We’re taught that quitters never win, but if the evidence from golf is any indication, it might be more accurate, if less pithy, to say that expected losers are more likely to quit, or at least not perform as well. If you’re running a business, and you have the opportunity to hire the Tiger Woods of office work, you’re not going to pass up the chance. But Brown’s study suggests you might want to consider its effect on your other workers’ performance. Steak knives might not cut it as second prize.

The Incoherent Ponderer, meanwhile, suggests that her findings are particularly applicable in the academic job market, where, he says, the “Tiger Woods effect” is “quite strongly pronounced. Applying for tenure-track jobs at the same time as someone in the same field with a more stellar record (in terms of publications, letters of recommendations, and pedigree) can often make it very difficult to get interviews (and job offers) for even otherwise highly qualified applicants.”

Thoughts?