Identity, Groups, and Social Preferences
This paper presents a novel experiment on identity and individual social preferences. Using a within subject design and new empirical methods, we find more than twenty percent of subjects destroy total income – at personal cost – to earn more than subjects outside their group. Minimal groups divide subjects according to arbitrary criteria, and political groups divide subjects according to party affiliations and opinions. In both treatments, Democrats behave more selfishly and destructively towards out-group members. Independents do so only in political groups, though less strongly. Thus group divisions are salient for some people but not others, depending on individual differences and identities.(Rachel Kranton, Matthew Pease, Seth Sanders, and Scott Huettel)
