Group membership, team preferences, and expectations

Francesco Guala, Luigi Mittone and Matteo Ploner

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2013, vol. 86, issue C, 183-190

Abstract: Group membership is a powerful determinant of social behaviour in a variety of experimental games. Its effect may be channelled primarily via the beliefs of group members, or directly change their social preferences. We report an experiment with a prisoner's dilemma with multiple actions, in which we manipulate players’ beliefs and show that group identity has a consistent positive effect on cooperation only when there is common knowledge of group affiliation. We also test the robustness of the minimal group effect using three different manipulations: one manipulation fails to induce group identity, and we observe an unsystematic effect of group membership when knowledge of affiliation is asymmetric.

Keywords: Group identity; Team preferences; Social dilemmas; Experimental economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:86:y:2013:i:c:p:183-190

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2012.12.003

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