How to choose your victim

Klaus Abbink and Gönül Doğan

Games and Economic Behavior, 2019, vol. 113, issue C, 482-496

Abstract: We introduce the experimental mobbing game. Each player in a group has the option to nominate one of the other players or to nominate no one. If the same person is nominated by all other players, he loses his payoff and the mob gains. We conduct three sets of experiments to study the effects of monetary gains, fear of being mobbed, and different types of focality. In the repeated mobbing game, we find that subjects frequently coordinate on selecting a victim, even for modest gains. Higher gains make mobbing more likely. We find no evidence that fear of becoming the victim explains mobbing. Richer and poorer players are equally focal. Pity plays no role in mobbing decisions. Ingroup members – introduced by colours – are less likely to be victims, and both payoff difference and colour difference serve as strong coordination devices. Commonly employed social preference theories do not explain our findings.

Keywords: Mobs; Coordination; Groups; Social preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D03 D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825618301696
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:gamebe:v:113:y:2019:i:c:p:482-496

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2018.10.006

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().