Social Distance and Parochial Altruism: An Experimental Study

Béatrice Boulu-Reshef (1) , Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (2)

1 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
2 University of Virginia, The Department of Politics

Parochial altruism-individual sacrifice to benefit the in-group and harm an out-group-undermines inter-group cooperation and is implicated in a plethora of politically-significant behaviors. We report new experimental findings about the impact of variation in social distance within the in-group together with variation in social distance between the in-and out-groups on parochial altruism. Building from a minimal group paradigm setup , we find that differential social distance has a systematic effect on individual choice in a setting of potential inter-group conflict. In particular, parochial altruism is stimulated when individuals' distance to both their in-and out-group is high. A long-standing finding about behavior in contexts of inter-group conflict is that low social distance facilitates collective action. Our results suggest that the effects of high social distance may create a potential additional pathway to group-based individual action. Research on inter-group conflict and collective action can be advanced by investigating such effects.

Domaines: Economies et finances; Science politique; Psychologie

Béatrice Boulu-Reshef, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl. Social Distance and Parochial Altruism: An Experimental Study. 2019. ⟨hal-02135633⟩