Competition between groups is ubiquitous in social and economic life, and typically occurs between groups that are not created equal. Here we experimentally investigate the implications of this general observation on the unfolding of symmetric and asymmetric competition between groups that are either homogeneous or heterogeneous in the ability of their members to contribute to the success of the group. Our main finding is that relative to the benchmark case in which two homogeneous compete against each other, heterogeneity within groups per se has no discernable effect on competition, while introducing heterogeneity between groups leads to a significant intensification of conflict as well as increased volatility, thereby reducing earnings of contest participants and increasing inequality. We further find that heterogeneous groups share the labor much more equally than predicted by theory, and that in asymmetric contests group members change the way in which they condition their efforts on those of their peers. Implications for contest designers are discussed.

群体之间的竞争在社会和经济生活中无处不在，通常发生在不平等的群体之间。在这里，我们通过实验研究了这种普遍观察对成员之间为成员的成功做出贡献的能力是同质的还是异质的群体之间对称和不对称竞争的展开的意义。我们的主要发现是，相对于两个同类竞争性竞争的基准案例，群体内部的异质性本身对竞争没有明显的影响，而群体之间引入异质性则导致冲突的加剧以及波动性的增加，从而减少比赛参与者的收入并增加不平等。我们进一步发现，异类群体比理论上所预测的更加平等地分担了劳动，并且在非对称竞赛中，群体成员改变了以同龄人为条件的工作方式。讨论了对竞赛设计者的影响。