The short arm of guilt – An experiment on group identity and guilt aversion

Alexander Morell

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2019, vol. 166, issue C, 332-345

Abstract: In a laboratory experiment, I test whether guilt aversion, i.e., a preference to fulfill the expectations of others, plays out more strongly if agents share an induced social identity. Participants play a dictator game in which they can condition their amount sent on recipients’ beliefs. Dictators either play with a recipient from their own group (ingroup treatment) or from the other group (outgroup treatment). I find that the positive influence of second-order beliefs on how much a dictator sends is stronger in the ingroup treatment. However, the way dictators react to very high expectations does not differ significantly between treatments. In contrast to previous work I do not find that amounts sent are an inversely u-shaped function of recipients’ expectations. Rather, and independently of the treatment, participants tend to ignore very high expectations.

Keywords: Guilt aversion; Social identity; Beliefs; Generosity; Experiment; Psychological Game Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C72 C91 D64 D84 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:166:y:2019:i:c:p:332-345

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2019.06.022

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