Social Identity and Social Value Orientations

Abstract

This study provides an extension of the social value orientation model and a tool, other-other Decomposed Games, to quantify the influence of social identity on social value orientations. Social identity is induced experimentally using the minimal group paradigm. Subsequently, the weights subjects add to the outcomes of outgroup others relative to ingroup others and to the absolute difference between the outcomes of ingroup and outgroup others are estimated. Results are compared to a control condition in which social identity is not induced. Results show that when the outgroup is better off than the ingroup, the average subject is spiteful: they derive negative utility from the outcomes of the outgroup other. When the ougroup is worse off than the ingroup, the average subject attaches similar weights to the outcomes of outgroup and ingroup others. There is also significant variation across subjects with respect to the level of ingroup bias.