Because of you I did not give up – Peer effects in perseverance

It has been shown that both perseverance as well as peer effects affect performance. In our experiment, we investigate the interplay between these two factors. Participants work on a wordplay task where we quantify perseverance as the decision to continue working hard in the face of challenges. We find that persevering on the task is significantly correlated with the psychological questionnaire measure of grit (Duckworth et al., 2007). In an additional treatment, we provide participants with information about a peer's contemporaneous perseverance on the task. This significantly increases participants’ perseverance on the task independently of their perseverance as measured in the questionnaire, suggesting that it does not only depend on individuals’ inherent traits, but can also be increased by peers.