Social Identity and Preferences

Daniel Benjamin, James Choi and A. Strickland

Yale School of Management Working Papers from Yale School of Management

Abstract: We provide evidence that time and risk preference norms tied to social identities help shape observed U.S. demographic patterns in economic outcomes. We identify the marginal effect of norms by measuring how laboratory subjects' choices change when an aspect of social identity is made salient. We find that when ethnic identity is salient to Asian-American subjects, they make more patient choices. When we make race salient to black subjects, non-immigrant blacks (but not immigrant blacks) make more risk-averse choices. Making gender identity salient causes choices to conform to gender norms the subject believes are relatively more common.

Keywords: race; ethnicity; gender; identity; norm; stereotype; risk aversion; time preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-04-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.som.yale.edu/icfpub/publications/2634.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Social Identity and Preferences (2010)
Working Paper: Social Identity and Preferences (2007)
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:ysm:wpaper:amz2634

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Yale School of Management Working Papers from Yale School of Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().