Ego-relevance in team production

We study how individuals’ effort contribution to a team production task varies depending on whether the task is ego relevant or not. We conduct an experiment to test the effect of egorelevance when the team production depends on the team’s top- or bottom-performer. Egorelevance is manipulated by calling the Raven IQ Test an “IQ Task” or a “Pattern Task.” We find that the effort contributed to the task is affected by ego-relevance and the impact of the team production function on effort contribution is mediated by the teammate’s expected effort contribution. Ego-relevance increases the responsiveness to the teammate’s expected effort contributions. Similarly, more responsive behavior is noticeable when the team production depends on the bottom-performer. However, we do not observe interaction-effects between ego-relevance and the team production function that affect effort contributions.