Which hat to wear? Impact of natural identities on coordination and cooperation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chen, Yan; Li, Sherry Xin; Liu, Tracy Xiao; Shih, Margaret
• 署名单位: University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas; Tsinghua University; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2013.12.002
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 58-86
• 关键词: Social identity; diversity; prisoner's dilemma; Minimum-effort game; experiment

摘要

As the workforce becomes increasingly diverse, motivating individuals from different backgrounds to work together effectively is a major challenge facing organizations. In an experiment conducted at a large public university in the United States, we manipulate the salience of participants' multidimensional natural identities and investigate the effects of identity on coordination and cooperation in a series of minimum-effort and prisoner's dilemma games. By priming a fragmenting (ethnic) identity, we find that, compared to the control, participants are significantly less likely to choose high effort in the minimum-effort games, leading to less efficient coordination. In comparison, priming a common organization (school) identity significantly increases the choice of a rational joint payoff maximizing strategy in a prisoner's dilemma game. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.