Intergroup Revenge: A Laboratory Experiment

David Hugh-Jones and Martin Leroch

Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, 2017, vol. 34, issue 2, No 2, 117-135

Abstract: Abstract Several everyday examples imply that humans reciprocate not only towards direct perpetrators, but also to entire groups, thereby potentially affecting innocent bystanders. We test the hypothesis that people are predisposed to reciprocate against groups. In a laboratory experiment, subjects who were helped or harmed by another player’s action reacted by helping or harming another member of that player’s group. This group reciprocity was only observed when one group was seen as unfairly advantaged. Thus, activation of group reciprocity may be a causal mechanism that links perceived injustice to intergroup conflict. We discuss the relevance of group reciprocity to political and economic phenomena including violence, discrimination and team competition.

Keywords: Experiment; Intergroup revenge; Fairness; Group identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41412-017-0049-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:homoec:v:34:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s41412-017-0049-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/41412

DOI: 10.1007/s41412-017-0049-0

Access Statistics for this article

Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics is currently edited by M.J. Holler, M. Kocher and K.K. Sieberg

More articles in Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().