IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-02135633.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Distance and Parochial Altruism: An Experimental Study

Author

Listed:
  • Béatrice Boulu-Reshef

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl

    (University of Virginia, The Department of Politics)

Abstract

Parochial altruism-individual sacrifice to benefit the in-group and harm an out-group-undermines inter-group cooperation and is implicated in a plethora of politically-significant behaviors. We report new experimental findings about the impact of variation in social distance within the in-group together with variation in social distance between the in-and out-groups on parochial altruism. Building from a minimal group paradigm setup , we find that differential social distance has a systematic effect on individual choice in a setting of potential inter-group conflict. In particular, parochial altruism is stimulated when individuals' distance to both their in-and out-group is high. A long-standing finding about behavior in contexts of inter-group conflict is that low social distance facilitates collective action. Our results suggest that the effects of high social distance may create a potential additional pathway to group-based individual action. Research on inter-group conflict and collective action can be advanced by investigating such effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Béatrice Boulu-Reshef & Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl, 2019. "Social Distance and Parochial Altruism: An Experimental Study," Working Papers hal-02135633, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02135633
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02135633
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-02135633/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Keuschnigg, Marc & Schikora, Jan, 2014. "The dark side of leadership: An experiment on religious heterogeneity and cooperation in India," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 19-26.
    2. Habyarimana, James & Humphreys, Macartan & Posner, Daniel N. & Weinstein, Jeremy M., 2007. "Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(4), pages 709-725, November.
    3. William Easterly & Ross Levine, 1997. "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1203-1250.
    4. Alberto Alesina & Reza Baqir & William Easterly, 1999. "Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1243-1284.
    5. Helen Bernhard & Urs Fischbacher & Ernst Fehr, 2006. "Parochial altruism in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 442(7105), pages 912-915, August.
    6. Keuschnigg, Marc & Schikora, Jan, 2014. "The Dark Side of Leadership: An Experiment on Religious Heterogeneity and Cooperation in India," MPRA Paper 57533, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Carol R. Ember & Melvin Ember, 1992. "Resource Unpredictability, Mistrust, and War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 36(2), pages 242-262, June.
    8. Scott Huettel & Rachel Kranton, 2012. "Identity Economics and the Brain: Uncovering Mechanisms of Social Conflict," Post-Print halshs-00754597, HAL.
    9. Ilana Ritov & Tehila Kogut, 2017. "Altruistic behavior in cohesive social groups: The role of target identifiability," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(11), pages 1-16, November.
    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. Weisel, Ori & Zultan, Ro’i, 2021. "Perceptions of conflict: Parochial cooperation and outgroup spite revisited," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 57-71.

    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. Boulu-Reshef, Béatrice & Schulhofer-Wohl, Jonah, 2022. "The impact of distance on parochial altruism: An experimental investigation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    2. Faillo, Marco & Grieco, Daniela & Zarri, Luca, 2012. "Cultural Diversity, Cooperation,and Anti-social Punishment," AICCON Working Papers 102-2012, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    3. Seidel, André, 2023. "A global map of amenities: Public goods, ethnic divisions and decentralization," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    4. Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín & Romain Wacziarg, 2009. "The political economy of ethnolinguistic cleavages," Working Papers 2009-17, Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales.
    5. Gerring, John & Thacker, Strom C. & Lu, Yuan & Huang, Wei, 2015. "Does Diversity Impair Human Development? A Multi-Level Test of the Diversity Debit Hypothesis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 166-188.
    6. Erik Lindqvist & Robert Östling, 2013. "Identity and redistribution," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 469-491, June.
    7. Joseph Flavian Gomes, 2020. "The health costs of ethnic distance: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 195-226, June.
    8. Franck, Raphaël & Rainer, Ilia, 2012. "Does the Leader's Ethnicity Matter? Ethnic Favoritism, Education, and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 106(2), pages 294-325, May.
    9. Zhang, Zhe & Zhang, Xu & Putterman, Louis, 2019. "Trust and cooperation at a confluence of worlds: An experiment in Xinjiang, China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 128-144.
    10. Remi Jedwab & Adam Storeygard, 2019. "Economic and Political Factors in Infrastructure Investment: Evidence from Railroads and Roads in Africa 1960–2015," Economic History of Developing Regions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 156-208, May.
    11. Rachel Glennerster & Edward Miguel & Alexander D. Rothenberg, 2013. "Collective Action in Diverse Sierra Leone Communities," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 285-316, May.
    12. Isil R. Yavuz & Berrak Bahadir, 2021. "Remittances, Ethnic Diversity, and Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries," Working Papers 2110, Florida International University, Department of Economics.
    13. Desmet, Klaus & Ortuño-Ortín, Ignacio & Wacziarg, Romain, 2012. "The political economy of linguistic cleavages," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 322-338.
    14. Ahlerup, Pelle & Hansson, Gustav, 2011. "Nationalism and government effectiveness," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 431-451, September.
    15. Kim Yi Dionne, 2015. "Social networks, ethnic diversity, and cooperative behavior in rural Malawi," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(4), pages 522-543, October.
    16. repec:dau:papers:123456789/11437 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Gisselquist, Rachel M. & Leiderer, Stefan & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2016. "Ethnic Heterogeneity and Public Goods Provision in Zambia: Evidence of a Subnational “Diversity Dividend”," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 308-323.
    18. Hollard, Guillaume & Sene, Omar, 2020. "What drives the quality of schools in Africa? Disentangling social capital and ethnic divisions," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    19. Ann-Sofie Isaksson, 2015. "Corruption Along Ethnic Lines: A Study of Individual Corruption Experiences in 17 African Countries," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(1), pages 80-92, January.
    20. Andreoni, James & Payne, A. Abigail & Smith, Justin & Karp, David, 2016. "Diversity and donations: The effect of religious and ethnic diversity on charitable giving," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 47-58.
    21. Sherry Xin Li, 2010. "Social Identities, Ethnic Diversity, and Tax Morale," Public Finance Review, , vol. 38(2), pages 146-177, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hal:wpaper:hal-02135633. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.