Social Identity, Group Behavior, and Teams

Abstract

The issue of one's identity has loomed large recently and has unfortunately been used more and more as a wedge to separate subgroups. It is important to understand the ramifications of identity, both to limit the negative consequences (such as so-called identity politics) and to be able to use one's sense of identity as a positive force in the world. What are effective approaches to allow positive identities and pride about one's social identity to be reinforced for the greater good? Recent work suggests that some forms of team competition can induce greater effort, which can be applied to areas such as microlending, charitable giving, and organization of the gig economy. And yet many fascinating questions remain; for example, what is the interaction of salience, social norms, and preferences on the effects of social identity in our society? Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 12 is August 3, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Preference for Identification in the Field – Nudging Refugees’ Integration Effort

“…Our paper contributes to several strands of literature. First, we contribute to the empirical literature on identity in economics recently summarized by Shayo (2020) and Charness and Chen (2020). By showing that individuals actively invest into a group identity, we provide evidence for endogenous identity formation and a preference for identification.…”

Team Incentives, Social Cohesion, and Performance: A Natural Field Experiment

“…The second survey is completed by, on average, 23 percent of employees and 68 percent of managers. 24 We discuss self-selection into the surveys below.…”

“…FigureA1in the Appendix shows a common trend in sales growth for treated and control stores in the period before the experiment 24. Table3gives the average of outcomes at the store level.…”

Wage Policies, Incentive Schemes, and Motivation

“…The chapter then closes with a more general discussion of worker responses to various wage circumstances, including wage cuts, wage raises, and wage inequality between workers. Note that while identity and group membership are important considerations for worker productivity, these topics are omitted here; see instead the chapter by Li titled "Group Identity, In-Group Favoritism, and Discrimination" and also Charness and Chen (2020).…”