Sahar Sangi

Research:

Publication:

Willingness to Compete in Dirty Competitions Management Science, 2026 (with Thomas Buser)

Competitive environments often leave room for “dirty” practices such as sabotage, retaliation, or dishonesty. We use an experiment to document aggregate levels and individual differences in the willingness to engage in dirty competition. We then use representative survey data to show that this willingness is a strong predictor of holding a management position and of working in the private – versus the public – sector, but also of worse self-esteem, worse social relationships, and increased feelings of guilt and shame.

Work in Progress:

Communication and Willingness to Compete (Job Market Paper, with Thomas Buser)

In many competitive settings, people know their potential opponents and may try to dissuade them from entering. We study how pre-competition communication affects coordination, default wins, and average earnings, and how it changes who benefits. We found that confident participants are more likely to win by default, while facing a confident opponent reduces willingness to compete and earnings. AI-assisted chat analysis shows assertive communication and stating a high score deter opponents, though most participants avoid these strategies. In mixed-sex pairs, men more often win by default, earn more, and communicate more assertively.

(Mis)Perceived Prevalence of Antisocial Behavior across Demographic Groups (single author)

I study whether people accurately judge which demographic groups are more likely to behave antisocially.  In two incentivized online experiments, I first measure actual antisocial behavior across gender, political affiliation, and education by observing whether participants take from or destroy a partner’s earnings. Then, a separate sample predicts these group-specific behavior rates, receives truthful information about actual behavior, and makes payoff-relevant partner choices. The findings show that actual behavioral differences across groups are small, but perceived differences are substantially larger. Participants update their beliefs in response to truthful information about as much as they do in the neutral condition, and their partner choices reflect which groups they believe to be less antisocial. However, the experimentally induced belief updating does not lead to detectable changes in partner choice.

Team Production When Promotion Is Competitive (with Francesca Gioia)

Experimental study analyzing how promotion-based incentives affect cooperation and performance in team production environments.