IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v45y2001i3p283-296.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Confusion of Group Interest and Self-Interest in Parochial Cooperation on Behalf of a Group

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Baron

    (Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

People often sacrifice their self-interest for a group to which they belong, even when outsiders are harmed so that the sacrifice has no net benefit. Two experiments (conducted on the World Wide Web) suggest that people do this, in part, because they think that cooperation on behalf of the group is in their narrow self-interest; they show an enhanced self-interest illusion. One experiment found that the self-interest illusion is related to the enhanced tendency to cooperate on behalf of a group when the insiders' gain is the outsiders' loss. A second experiment found that the illusion (and the resulting parochial cooperation) was reduced when subjects were required to calculate all gains and losses.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Baron, 2001. "Confusion of Group Interest and Self-Interest in Parochial Cooperation on Behalf of a Group," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 45(3), pages 283-296, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:45:y:2001:i:3:p:283-296
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002701045003002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002701045003002
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002701045003002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Riker, William H. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1968. "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 25-42, March.
    2. Peregrine Schwartz-Shea & Randy T. Simmons, 1991. "Egoism, Parochialism, and Universalism," Rationality and Society, , vol. 3(1), pages 106-132, January.
    3. Probst, Tahira M. & Carnevale, Peter J. & Triandis, Harry C., 1999. "Cultural Values in Intergroup and Single-Group Social Dilemmas," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 171-191, March.
    4. Riker, William H. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1968. "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 25-42, March.
    5. Michael Birnbaum, 2000. "Psychological experiments on the internet," Framed Field Experiments 00125, The Field Experiments Website.
    6. Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine & Simmons, Randy T, 1990. "The Layered Prisoners' Dilemma: Ingroup versus Macro-efficiency," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 65(1), pages 61-83, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Delaney, Jason & Jacobson, Sarah, 2014. "Those outsiders: How downstream externalities affect public good provision," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 340-352.
    2. repec:cup:judgdm:v:13:y:2018:i:1:p:79-98 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Rineke Verbrugge & Ben Meijering & Stefan Wierda & Hedderik van Rijn & Niels Taatgen, 2018. "Stepwise training supports strategic second-order theory of mind in turn-taking games," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(1), pages 79-98, January.
    4. Nicholas Wilson, 2012. "Shock to the System: Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Child Mortality," Department of Economics Working Papers 2012-03, Department of Economics, Williams College, revised Jul 2013.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cantoni, Enrico & Gazzè, Ludovica & Schafer, Jerome, 2021. "Turnout in concurrent elections: Evidence from two quasi-experiments in Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    2. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    3. Ni, Xinwen, 2019. "Voting for Health Insurance Policy: the U.S. versus Europe," IRTG 1792 Discussion Papers 2019-012, Humboldt University of Berlin, International Research Training Group 1792 "High Dimensional Nonstationary Time Series".
    4. Abraham Aldama & Mateo Vásquez-Cortés & Lauren Elyssa Young, 2019. "Fear and citizen coordination against dictatorship," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(1), pages 103-125, January.
    5. Lirong Xia, 2020. "How Likely Are Large Elections Tied?," Papers 2011.03791, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    6. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    7. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    8. León, Gianmarco, 2017. "Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 56-71.
    9. Stephen Coate & Michael Conlin, 2002. "Voter Turnout: Theory and Evidence from Texas Liquor Referenda," NBER Working Papers 8720, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Battaglini, Marco, 2005. "Sequential voting with abstention," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 445-463, May.
    11. Londregan, John & Vindigni, Andrea, 2006. "Voting as a Credible Threat," Papers 10-04-2006, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    12. Francesca Acacia & Maria Cubel Sanchez, 2014. "Strategic voting and happiness," Chapters,in: A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 7, pages 160-176 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. François Facchini & Louis Jaeck, 2019. "Ideology and the rationality of non-voting," Rationality and Society, , vol. 31(3), pages 265-286, August.
    14. Sidney Verba & Kay L. Schlozman & Henry E. Brady, 2000. "Rational Action and Political Activity," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 12(3), pages 243-268, July.
    15. François Facchini & Abel François, 2005. "Territorial captivity and voter participation in national election: a theoretical and empirical analysis," Post-Print hal-00270739, HAL.
    16. Alessandro Morselli, 2021. "Individual decisions and collective choices in the history of economic thought," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 3, pages 77-96,97-11.
    17. Alacevich, Caterina & Zejcirovic, Dijana, 2020. "Does violence against civilians depress voter turnout? Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 841-865.
    18. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    19. Cloléry, Héloïse, 2023. "Legislators in the crossfire: Strategic non-voting and the effect of transparency," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    20. João Amaro de Matos & Pedro Barros, 2004. "Social Norms and the Paradox of Elections’ Turnout," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 239-255, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:45:y:2001:i:3:p:283-296. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.