Arbeitspapier

Shifting Punishment on Minorities: Experimental Evidence of Scapegoating

This paper provides experimental evidence showing that members of a majority group systematically shift punishment on innocent members of an ethnic minority. We develop a new incentivized task, the Punishing the Scapegoat Game, to measure how injustice affecting a member of one's own group shapes punishment of an unrelated bystander ("a scapegoat"). We manipulate the ethnic identity of the scapegoats and study interactions between the majority group and the Roma minority in Slovakia. We find that when no harm is done, there is no evidence of discrimination against the ethnic minority. In contrast, when a member of one's own group is harmed, the punishment "passed" on innocent individuals more than doubles when they are from the minority, as compared to when they are from the dominant group. These results illuminate how individualized tensions can be transformed into a group conflict, dragging minorities into conflicts in a way that is completely unrelated to their behavior.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 14608

Classification
Wirtschaft
Field Experiments
Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡
Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
Subject
punishment
minority groups
inter-group conflict
discrimination
scapegoating
lab-in-field experiments

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Bauer, Michal
Cahlíková, Jana
Chytilová, Julie
Roland, Gerald
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
(where)
Bonn
(when)
2021

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Bauer, Michal
  • Cahlíková, Jana
  • Chytilová, Julie
  • Roland, Gerald
  • Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Time of origin

  • 2021

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