Reacting to Unfairness: Group Identity and Dishonest Behavior

Nives Della Valle and Matteo Ploner

No 1607, CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: Employees' misconduct can be attributed to experiences of unfairness. Does this dishonest reaction change when employees identify with the whole organization or with a subunit only? We experimentally investigate whether individuals are more likely to engage in dishonest behavior after having experienced unfairness perpetrated by a peer with a salient group identity. Two peers generate an endowment together, but only one can decide how to share it. They either share the same group identity or have distinct group identities. Then, they approach a task in which they can opportunistically engage in dishonest behavior. Our results show that when peers share the same group identity, unfair distributive decisions do not trigger a dishonest reaction. In contrast, when different group identities coexist, dishonest behavior is observed as a reaction to unfairness.

Keywords: Group Identity; Fairness; Dishonesty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D03 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
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Journal Article: Reacting to Unfairness: Group Identity and Dishonest Behavior (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trn:utwpce:1607

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