In-group versus Out-group Preferences in Intergroup Conflict: An Experiment

Subhasish Chowdhury, Anwesha Mukherjee and Roman Sheremeta
Additional contact information
Anwesha Mukherjee: School of Management, Technische Universitat München
Roman Sheremeta: Weatherhead School of Management, Case western Reserve University and Economic Science Institute, Chapman University

Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Abstract: Individuals participating in a group conflict have different preferences, e.g., maximizing their own payoff, maximizing the group’s payoff, or defeating the rivals. When such preferences are present simultaneously, it is difficult to distinctly identify the impact of those preferences on conflict. In order to separate in-group and out-group preferences, we conduct an experiment in which human in-group or out-group players are removed while keeping the game strategically similar. Our design allows us to study (i) how effort in a group conflict vary due to in-group and out-group preferences, and (ii) how the impact of these preferences vary when the two groups have explicitly different social identities. The results of our experiment show that the presence of in-groups enhances concern about individual payoffs. A further presence of outgroups moderates the concern for individual payoffs through an additional concern for own group payoffs. The negative effect of the in-group preferences and the positive effect of the out-group preferences are weaker when group members have a common social identity.

Keywords: Group conflict; Contest; Identity; Social preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D74 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/341/

Related works:
Working Paper: In-group versus Out-group Preferences in Intergroup Conflict: An Experiment (2021)
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:chu:wpaper:21-02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Megan Luetje ().