IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/econwp/qt6c55s38q.html

Elections and selfishness

Author

Listed:
  • Bjorvatn, Kjetil
  • Galle, Simon
  • Berge, Lars Ivar Oppedal
  • Miguel, Edward
  • Posner, Daniel N
  • Tungodden, Bertil
  • Zhang, Kelly

Abstract

Elections affect the division of resources in society and are occasions for political elites to make appeals rooted in voters' self-interest. Hence, elections may erode altruistic norms and cause people to behave more selfishly. We test this intuition using Dictator Games in a lab-in-the-field experiment involving a sample of more than 1000 individuals in Kenya and Tanzania. We adopt two approaches. First, we experimentally prime participants to think about the upcoming or most recent elections and find that this priming treatment reduces how much money participants are willing to give to other players. Second, we compare results obtained across lab rounds in Kenya taking place right before the country's 2013 national elections and eight months prior, and find that selfishness is greater in the lab round more proximate to the election. Our results suggest that elections may affect social behavior in important—and previously unrecognized—ways.

Suggested Citation

  • Bjorvatn, Kjetil & Galle, Simon & Berge, Lars Ivar Oppedal & Miguel, Edward & Posner, Daniel N & Tungodden, Bertil & Zhang, Kelly, 2021. "Elections and selfishness," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt6c55s38q, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:econwp:qt6c55s38q
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6c55s38q.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maarten J. Voors & Eleonora E. M. Nillesen & Philip Verwimp & Erwin H. Bulte & Robert Lensink & Daan P. Van Soest, 2012. "Violent Conflict and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Burundi," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 941-964, April.
    2. Daniel J. Benjamin & James J. Choi & A. Joshua Strickland, 2010. "Social Identity and Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1913-1928, September.
    3. Michael Callen & Mohammad Isaqzadeh & James D. Long & Charles Sprenger, 2014. "Violence and Risk Preference: Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 123-148, January.
    4. Healy, Andrew J. & Persson, Mikael & Snowberg, Erik, 2017. "Digging into the Pocketbook: Evidence on Economic Voting from Income Registry Data Matched to a Voter Survey," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 111(4), pages 771-785, November.
    5. Michelitch, Kristin, 2015. "Does Electoral Competition Exacerbate Interethnic or Interpartisan Economic Discrimination? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Market Price Bargaining," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(1), pages 43-61, February.
    6. Callen, Mike & Isaqzadeh, Mohammad & Long, James D. & Sprenger, Charles, 2014. "Violence and risk preference: experimental evidence from Afghanistan," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102932, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Fisman, Raymond & Jakiela, Pamela & Kariv, Shachar, 2015. "How did distributional preferences change during the Great Recession?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 84-95.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ori Shai, 2023. "Can conflict affect individuals’ preferences for income redistribution?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(4), pages 3071-3096, October.
    2. Chuang, Yating & Schechter, Laura, 2015. "Stability of experimental and survey measures of risk, time, and social preferences: A review and some new results," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 151-170.
    3. Alain Cohn & Ernst Fehr & Michel André Maréchal, 2017. "Do Professional Norms in the Banking Industry Favor Risk-taking?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(11), pages 3801-3823.
    4. Kenta Tanaka & Keisaku Higashida & Arvin Vista & Anton Setyo Nugroho & Budi Muhamad Ruslan, 2016. "Do resource depletion experiences affect social cooperative preferences? Analysis using field experimental data on fishers in the Philippines and Indonesia," Discussion Paper Series 143, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Jun 2016.
    5. Castillo, Jose Gabriel & Hernandez, Manuel A., 2023. "The unintended consequences of confinement: Evidence from the rural area in Guatemala," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    6. Bucciol, Alessandro & Zarri, Luca, 2015. "The shadow of the past: Financial risk taking and negative life events," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 1-16.
    7. Meng, Xin & Zhao, Guochang, 2021. "The long shadow of a large scale education interruption: The intergenerational effect," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    8. Bartoš, Vojtěch, 2021. "Seasonal scarcity and sharing norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 303-316.
    9. Bucciol, Alessandro & Hu, Alessio & Zarri, Luca, 2019. "The effects of prior outcomes on managerial risk taking: Evidence from Italian professional soccer," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PB).
    10. Goytom Abraha Kahsay & Daniel Osberghaus, 2018. "Storm Damage and Risk Preferences: Panel Evidence from Germany," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 71(1), pages 301-318, September.
    11. Freitas-Monteiro, Teresa & Ludolph, Lars, 2025. "Barriers to humanitarian migration, victimization and integration outcomes: Evidence from Germany," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    12. Rice, Nigel & Robone, Silvana, 2022. "The effects of health shocks on risk preferences: Do personality traits matter?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 356-371.
    13. James Banks & Elena Bassoli & Irene Mammi, 2019. "Changing Risk Preferences at Older Ages," Working Papers 2019:01, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    14. Melesse, Mequanint B. & Cecchi, Francesco, 2017. "Does Market Experience Attenuate Risk Aversion? Evidence from Landed Farm Households in Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 447-466.
    15. Ajzenman, Nicolás & Aksoy, Cevat Giray & Guriev, Sergei, 2022. "Exposure to transit migration: Public attitudes and entrepreneurship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    16. Kimbrough, Erik O. & Laughren, Kevin & Sheremeta, Roman, 2020. "War and conflict in economics: Theories, applications, and recent trends," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 998-1013.
    17. Guo, Shiqi & An, Jiafu, 2022. "Does terrorism make people pessimistic? Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    18. Marino Fages, Diego & Morales Cerda, Matías, 2022. "Migration and social preferences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    19. Chatruc,Marisol Rodriguez & Rozo Villarraga,Sandra Viviana, 2022. "Discrimination Toward Migrants During Crises," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10091, The World Bank.
    20. Ella Sargsyan, 2022. "Violent Conflicts and Child Gender Preferences of Parents: Evidence from Nigeria," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp723, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:econwp:qt6c55s38q. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibbrkus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.