Competition and the Role of Group Identity
35 Pages Posted: 23 Jul 2019
Date Written: 2019
Abstract
The emergence of competition is a defining aspect of human nature and characterizes many important social environments. However, its relationship with how social groups are formed has received little attention. We design an experiment to analyze how individuals' willingness to compete is affected by group identity. We find that individuals display substantially stronger competitiveness in within group (ingroup) matchings than in between group (outgroup) matchings or in a control setting where no group identity is induced. We also find that the effect of group identity is stronger for subjects who participated more actively in the team-building task.
Keywords: competition, social distance, group identity, laboratory experiment
JEL Classification: C920, D030
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation