Competition and the role of group identity

Francesca Cornaglia, Michalis Drouvelis and Paolo Masella

No 886, Working Papers from Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance

Abstract: The emergence of competition is a defining aspect of human nature and characterizes many important social environments. However, its relationship with how social groups are formed has received little attention. We design an experiment to analyze how individuals’ willingness to compete is affected by group identity. We find that individuals display substantially stronger competitiveness in within group (ingroup) matchings than in between group (outgroup) matchings or in a control setting where no group identity is induced. We also find that the effect of group identity is stronger for subjects who participated more actively in the team-building task.

Keywords: competition; social distance; group identity; laboratory experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Journal Article: Competition and the role of group identity (2019)
Working Paper: Competition and the role of group identity (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:886

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