Ricerc@Sapienza

We aim to empirically investigate the rationale of in-group-favoritism. As potential explanations, we concentrate on intrinsic preferences for own-group members and motivations related to individuals caring about the beliefs of others (founded on guilt aversion). We also consider their intersection. Our evidence shows that in-group-favoritism cannot be accounted for by changes in expectations. This suggests that preferences per se are the most powerful explanation of social identity.

Why do people keep their promises? Vanberg (2008) and Ederer and Stremitzer (2017) provide causal evidence in favor of, respectively, an intrinsic preference for keeping one's word and Charness and Dufwenberg's (2006) expectations-based account based on guilt aversion. The overall picture is incomplete though, as no study disentangles effects in a design that provides exogenous variation of both (the key features of) promises and beliefs. We report evidence from an experimental design that does so.