Anticipation of Discrimination, Misperceptions, and Trust: Application to Affective Polarization

Devesh Rustagi and Matthias Schief
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Matthias Schief: OECD

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Does anticipation of discrimination, beliefs individuals have about the discriminatory behavior of others toward them, undermine trust and cooperation? We develop a new design to isolate the role of anticipation of discrimination in cooperation dilemmas using a trust game. We capture the effect of anticipation on trust as the double di erence between the amount transferred by trustors to outgroup vs. ingroup trustees when their own identity is revealed vs. concealed. We apply our design in the context of a ective polarization in the UK using a large representative sample. We nd that anticipation of discrimination undermines inter-partisan trust and cooperation by the same magnitude as the combined e ect of taste-based and statistical discrimination. However, this anticipation is misperceived because trustees rarely discriminate along partisan lines, resulting in cooperation failure. Our design can be used to study anticipation of discrimination across di erent societal divisions including gender, et hnicity, religion, and caste. JEL Codes: C91 ; C93 ; J15 ; D72 ; Z13

Keywords: discrimination; anticipation; misperception; trust game; cooperation dilemma; affective polarization; United Kingdom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Working Paper: Anticipation of Discrimination, Misperceptions, and Trust: Application to Affective Polarization (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1535

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