Open AccessReshuffling Students to Fight Discrimination and Foster Pro-Social Behavior: A Field Experiment
Author(s) -
Marina Bosque Mercader,
Andrés Gago
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
cuadernos económicos de ice/cuadernos económicos de ice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2340-9037
pISSN - 0210-2633
DOI - 10.32796/cice.2020.99.7011
Subject(s) - social identity theory , class (philosophy) , social psychology , group (periodic table) , field (mathematics) , psychology , identity (music) , social class , collective identity , social group , political science , law , mathematics , computer science , chemistry , physics , organic chemistry , artificial intelligence , politics , acoustics , pure mathematics
There is substantial evidence that group identity shapes discrimination and pro-social behavior. Subjects tend to be more pro-social towards in-group members and discriminate out-group members. In this paper, we run a field experiment in a school in Barcelona to study whether belonging to the same class induces in-group favoritism. Moreover, we explore whether reshuffling students between classes is a good strategy to expand pro-social behavior within the school and fight discrimination. According to our results, participants allocate more resources, are more generous, retaliate less and give higher rewards to students who have always belonged to their same class relative to those who have never been part of it. Moreover, after varying the composition of classes, we find that new students in class start being considered group members and treated as so, while those that are not any longer in the same class do not lose their in-group status.