Blaming the refugees? Experimental evidence on responsibility attribution

Stefan Grimm and Felix Klimm

Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: Do people blame refugees for negative events? We propose a novel experimental paradigm to measure discrimination in responsibility attribution towards Arabic refugees in Germany. Participants in the laboratory experience a positive or negative income shock, which is with equal probability caused by a random draw or another participant's performance in a real effort task. Responsibility attribution is measured by beliefs about whether the shock is due to the other participant's performance or the random draw. We find evidence for reverse discrimination: Natives attribute responsibility more favorably to refugees than to other natives. In particular, refugees are less often held responsible for negative income shocks. Moreover, natives with negative implicit associations towards Arabic names attribute responsibility less favorably to refugees than natives with positive associations. Since neither actual performance differences nor beliefs about natives' and refugees' performance can explain our finding of reverse discrimination, we rule out statistical discrimination as the driving force. We discuss explanations based on theories of self-image and social image.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Journal of Economic Psychology 72(2019): pp. 156-178

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:lmu:muenar:78285

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tamilla Benkelberg (tamilla.benkelberg@econ.lmu.de).