Ethnic Hostility and Conflict

Michal Bauer and Chytilová, Julie

No 20402, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Ethnic hostility can fuel violent conflicts between ethnic groups. Thus, a fundamental question is how common desire to malevolently harm ethnic out-group members is, and in what situations it is most prone to manifest. This chapter reviews advances in the study of these questions, revolving along three complementary themes. First, we focus on measurement of ethnic hostility. We describe behavioral tasks designed to identify unambiguously hostile behavior and different ways to signal ethnic identity. We also discuss methodological challenges and ways that researchers have used to address them. Second, we review evidence that tests the existence of ethnic biases in pro-social and hostile behavior. While there is a rich body of lab-in-the-field experiments measuring ethnic biases in pro-social behavior, there are still only a handful of studies measuring ethnic biases in purely hostile behavior. Third, given that many real-life inter-group conflicts are characterized by relatively sudden changes in the behavior of masses towards aggression, an active area of research has begun to explore potential triggers and magnifiers of the strength of group identity, and of group-based pro-sociality and hostility. We review studies that focus on the roles of financial scarcity, stress, exposure to war, and social influences that unravel social norms. We highlight common patterns and suggest open questions in this important research agenda.

Keywords: Randomized; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D74 D91 J15 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20402 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20402

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20402

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().