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When to Favour Your Own group? The Threats of Costly Punishments and In-group Favouritism

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  • Donna Harris
  • Benedikt Herrmann
  • Andreas Kontoleon

Abstract

Using a laboratory experiment with minimal groups, we examined the extent to which the threats of costly punishments affect in-group favouritism behaviour. We studied three types of punishment separately: in-group, out-group, and third-party punishments. In line with previous studies, the majority of the allocators favoured their own group by allocating more money to each of the in-group members at the expense of the out-group in the baseline without punishment. In the in-group punishment treatment, we observed a slight increase in in-group favouritism behaviour. On the contrary, when only the out-group could punish the allocators, there was a significant drop in in-group favouritism behaviour as well as an increase in the equal division option. Finally, when faced with an independent third-party punisher the allocators continued to favour their own group. The threat of third-party punishment appeared to have no effect on their decisions. Our paper contributes to the literature on in-group favouritism and the nature of social norms by showing that the decision whether to favour one

Suggested Citation

  • Donna Harris & Benedikt Herrmann & Andreas Kontoleon, 2012. "When to Favour Your Own group? The Threats of Costly Punishments and In-group Favouritism," Economics Series Working Papers 628, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:628
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    Cited by:

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    2. Bicskei, Marianna & Lankau, Matthias & Bizer, Kilian, 2014. "How peer-punishment affects cooperativeness in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups: A public goods experiment with social identity," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 200, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    3. de Melo, Gioia & Piaggio, Matías, 2015. "The perils of peer punishment: Evidence from a common pool resource framed field experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 376-393.
    4. Bicskei, Marianna & Lankau, Matthias & Bizer, Kilian, 2016. "Negative reciprocity and its relation to anger-like emotions in identity-homogeneous and -heterogeneous groups," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 17-34.
    5. de Melo Gioia & Piaggio Matías, 2015. "The Perils of Peer Punishment: Evidence from a Common Pool Resource Experiment," Working Papers 2015-12, Banco de México.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    In-group favouritism; Group behaviour; Social identity; Social norm; In-group punishment; Out-group punishment; Third-party punishment; Favour game;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior

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