The Impact of Social Ties on Group Interactions: Evidence from Minimal Groups and Randomly Assigned Real Groups

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Goette, Lorenz; Huffman, David; Meier, Stephan
• 署名单位: University of Lausanne; Swarthmore College; Columbia University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.4.1.101
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 101-115
• 关键词: individual behavior; Group membership; ECONOMICS; responses; altruism; IDENTITY

摘要

Economists are increasingly interested in how group membership affects individual behavior. The standard method assigns individuals to minimal groups, i.e. arbitrary labels, in a lab. But real groups often involve social interactions leading to social ties between group members. Our experiments compare randomly assigned minimal groups to randomly assigned groups involving real social interactions. While adding social ties leads to qualitatively similar, although stronger, in-group favoritism in cooperation, altruistic norm enforcement patterns are qualitatively different between treatments. Our findings contribute to the micro-foundation of theories of group preferences, and caution against generalizations from minimal groups to groups with social context. (JEL C92, D64, D71, Z13)