Group Membership, Competition, and Altruistic Versus Antisocial Punishment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Army Groups
49 Pages Posted: 27 Sep 2010
Abstract
We investigate how group boundaries, and the economic environment surrounding groups, affect altruistic cooperation and punishment behavior. Our study uses experiments conducted with 525 officers in the Swiss Army, and exploits random assignment to platoons. We find that, without competition between groups, individuals are more prone to cooperate altruistically in a prisoner's dilemma game with in-group as opposed to out-group members. They also use a costly punishment option to selectively harm those who defect, encouraging a norm of cooperation towards the group. Adding competition between groups causes even stronger in-group cooperation, but also a qualitative change in punishment: punishment becomes antisocial, harming cooperative and defecting out-group members alike. These findings support recent evolutionary models and have important organizational implications.
Keywords: group membership, competition, punishment, army, experiment
JEL Classification: C72, C91, C93
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Civil War and Social Capital: Behavioral-Game Evidence from Nepal
By Michael J. Gilligan, Benjamin J. Pasquale, ...
-
By Lorenz Goette, David Huffman, ...
-
Gender Discrimination and Social Identity: Experimental Evidence from Urban Pakistan
By Adeline Delavande and Basit Zafar
-
Stereotypes and Madrassas: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan
By Adeline Delavande and Basit Zafar
-
Stereotypes and Madrassas: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan
By Adeline Delavande and Basit Zafar
-
Beyond Madrasas: Assessing the Links Between Education and Militancy in Pakistan
By Rebecca Winthrop and Corinne Graff
-
Teaching Practices and Social Capital
By Yann Algan, Yann Algan, ...
-
Teaching Practices and Social Capital
By Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc, ...
-
Teaching Practices and Social Capital
By Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc, ...
-
Empowering Women: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan
By Andrew Beath, Fotini Christia, ...