EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Status Inequality, Moral Disengagement and Violence

Armin Falk

No 2017-057, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This paper studies the causal effect of status differences on moral disengagement and violence. To measure violent behavior, in the experiment, a subject can inflict a painful electric shock on another subject in return for money. We exogenously vary relative status in the realm of sexual attractiveness. In three between-subject conditions, the assigned other subject is either of higher, lower or equal status. The incidence of electric shocks is substantially higher among subjects matched with higher- and lower-status others, relative to subjects matched with equal-status others. This causal evidence on the role of status inequality on violence suggests an important societal cost of economic and social inequalities.

Keywords: morality; violence; status; Inequality; laboratory experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C91 D03 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
Note: IP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Falk_2 ... y-moral-violence.pdf First version, July 17, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Status Inequality, Moral Disengagement and Violence (2017) Downloads
Working Paper: Status Inequality, Moral Disengagement and Violence (2017) Downloads
Working Paper: Status Inequality, Moral Disengagement and Violence (2017) Downloads
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:hka:wpaper:2017-057

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jennifer Pachon ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-057