Whom to Choose as a Team Mate? A Lab Experiment about In-Group Favouritism

Andrea Hammermann (), Alwine Mohnen () and Petra Nieken
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Andrea Hammermann: RWTH Aachen University
Alwine Mohnen: Munich University of Technology

No 6286, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The practical relevance of favouritism among students of the same study path is evident in lifelong memberships in fraternities or sororities or in high donations to faculties. In our study, we focus on the in-group favouritism of students by examining the trade-off of acting based on in-group favouritism or a performance signal when decisions are made about whom to choose as a team mate. The novel feature of your study is that the choice of a team mate is either benevolence or relevant to the own output. In the first scenario, only the payoff of the chosen subject changed, whereas in the second scenario, the decision affected the decider's own payoff as well as that of the chosen subject. The subjects ex ante knew the group type (path of study) of the pool of possible team mates and received a signal giving weak information about their ability regarding the task. Intuitively, one would expect more favouritism if the own payoff was not affected by the performance of the chosen team mate. However, we found the opposite. The subjects exerted more favouritism in the revenue sharing scenario. Possibly they expected reciprocal behaviour and less free riding if they selected a team mate belonging to their own group. Interestingly, groups formed based on favouritism did not perform significantly different from groups formed based on the performance signal.

Keywords: favouritism; lab experiment; teams (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D03 J71 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published - published in: Review of Managerial Science, 2014, 8(3), 327–350

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