Crime-related Exposure to Violence and Prosocial Behavior: Experimental Evidence

Several studies are concordant in finding a positive and significant effect of exposure to warfare onto prosocial behavior, measured either experimentally or in terms of civic-oriented behavior. Such increase in prosociality tends to favor the in-group – namely, the group with which the individual identifies – relative to the out-group. In this study, we assess whether these findings extend to victims of crime in urban areas. While some of the mechanisms proposed to explain the relationship in the context of warfare appear to be relevant for urban violence, the latter is likely to prompt ingroup/outgroup demarcations considerably less pronouncedly than warfare. We carry out two artefactual field experiments in Bogotá (Colombia) to address these issues. Our methodological strategy is to experimentally manipulate the recall of violence, either through a direct question or through a monetary loss in participants’ experimental endowment. We interact these treatments with the degree of exposure to violence. We find that victims recalling experiences of urban violence act more prosocially in terms of trust, trustworthiness, and cooperation. Such an increase in prosociality is also characterized by an ingroup bias favoring residents in the same city district as the participant. However, the ingroup bias holds in trust decisions but not in public goods games decisions. We fail to find statistically significant evidence supporting any of the possible mediation mechanisms we analyze.