Arbeitspapier

Ostracism and Theft in Heterogeneous Groups

Ostracism, or exclusion by peers, has been practiced since ancient times as a severe form of punishment against transgressors of laws or social norms. The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive analysis on how ostracism affects behavior and the functioning of a social group. We present data from a laboratory experiment, in which participants face a social dilemma on how to allocate limited resources between a productive activity and theft, and are given the opportunity to exclude members of their group by means of majority voting. Our main treatment features an environment with heterogeneity in productivity within groups, thus creating inequalities in economic opportunities and income. We find that exclusion is an effective form of punishment and decreases theft by excluded members once they are re-admitted into the group. However, it also leads to some retaliation by low-productivity members. A particularly worrisome aspect of exclusion is that punished group members are stigmatized and have a higher probability of facing exclusion again. We discuss implications of our findings for penal systems and their capacity to rehabilitate prisoners.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Working Papers in Economics and Statistics ; No. 2021-19

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Group Behavior
Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
Thema
ostracism
social dilemma
theft
rehabilitation
heterogeneous groups

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Baier, Alexandra
Balafoutas, Loukas
Jaber-Lopez, Tarek
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
(wo)
Innsbruck
(wann)
2021

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Baier, Alexandra
  • Balafoutas, Loukas
  • Jaber-Lopez, Tarek
  • University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)

Entstanden

  • 2021

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