Trust and in-group favoritism in a culture of crime

Meier, Stephan; Pierce, Lamar; Vaccaro, Antonino; Cara, Barbara La

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2016.09.005

“…For example, there is high trust within crime rings (Baccara & Bar-Isaac, 2008;Bowles & Gintis, 2004) and within communities that have been influenced by organized crime (Meier, Pierce, & Vaccaro, 2013). In these cases, there is high trust among ingroup members, but low trust in out-group members.…”

Section: Prosocial Lies and Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosocial lies: When deception breeds trust

Levine

¹

,

Schweitzer

²

2015

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

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Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long asserted that deception harms trust. We challenge this claim. Across four studies, we demonstrate that deception can increase trust. Specifically, prosocial lies increase the willingness to pass money in the trust game, a behavioral measure of benevolence-based trust. In Studies 1a and 1b, we find that altruistic lies increase trust when deception is directly experienced and when it is merely observed. In Study 2, we demonstrate that mutually beneficial lies also increase trust. In Study 3, we disentangle the effects of intentions and deception; intentions are far more important than deception for building benevolence-based trust. In Study 4, we examine how prosocial lies influence integrity-based trust. We introduce a new economic game, the Rely-or-Verifygame, to measure integrity-based trust. Prosocial lies increase benevolence-based trust, but harm integrity-based trust. Our findings expand our understanding of deception and deepen our insight into the mechanics of trust.

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“…However, research on corruption and favoritism provides evidence that individuals, at times, place enormous trust in others who have demonstrated low integrity. For example, there is high trust within crime rings (Baccara & Bar-Isaac, 2008;Bowles & Gintis, 2004) and within communities that have been influenced by organized crime (Meier, Pierce, & Vaccaro, 2013). In these cases, there is high trust among ingroup members, but low trust in out-group members.…”

Section: Prosocial Lies and Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosocial Lies: When Deception Breeds Trust

Levine

¹

,

Schweitzer

²

2014

AMPROC

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Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long asserted that deception harms trust. We challenge this claim. Across four studies, we demonstrate that deception can increase trust. Specifically, prosocial lies increase the willingness to pass money in the trust game, a behavioral measure of benevolence-based trust. In Studies 1a and 1b, we find that altruistic lies increase trust when deception is directly experienced and when it is merely observed. In Study 2, we demonstrate that mutually beneficial lies also increase trust. In Study 3, we disentangle the effects of intentions and deception; intentions are far more important than deception for building benevolence-based trust. In Study 4, we examine how prosocial lies influence integrity-based trust. We introduce a new economic game, the Rely-or-Verifygame, to measure integrity-based trust. Prosocial lies increase benevolence-based trust, but harm integrity-based trust. Our findings expand our understanding of deception and deepen our insight into the mechanics of trust.

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“…Evidence for the economic implications of intergroup discrimination is vast and spans from discrimination in labor, housing, credit or consumer markets to political conflict or even social unrest (see, e.g., Arrow, 1998;Darity and Mason, 1998;Ladd, 1998;Yinger, 1998;Fershtman and Gneezy, 2000;Bernhard et al, 2006;Goette et al, 2006;Charness et al, 2007;Chen and Li, 2009;Meier et al, 2014). Discrimination entails potentially large efficiency costs by undermining the provision of public goods when interacting with out-group members (Habyarimana et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Donations, risk attitudes and time preferences: A study on altruism in primary school children

Angerer

¹

,

Glätzle-Rützler

²

,

Lergetporer

³

et al. 2015

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe present experimental evidence from a bilingual city in Northern Italy on whether the language spoken by a partner in a prisoner's dilemma game affects behavior and leads to discrimination. Running a framed field experiment with 828 six-to eleven-year old primary school children in the city of Meran, we find that cooperation generally increases with age, but that the gap between cooperation among in-group members and cooperation towards children speaking another language is considerable and increasing with age. This gap is due to both, in-group favoritism and language group discrimination. JEL-Code:C91, C93, D03

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Trust and in-group favoritism in a culture of crime

Cited by 52 publications

References 75 publications

Prosocial lies: When deception breeds trust

Prosocial lies: When deception breeds trust

Prosocial Lies: When Deception Breeds Trust

Donations, risk attitudes and time preferences: A study on altruism in primary school children

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