Jeffrey V. Butler

Trust, Truth, Status and Identity: An Experimental Inquiry

Abstract To investigate how group-contingent non-pecuniary preferences are affected when one group occupies a position of higher status than another group, experimental participants were divided into two trivially distinct groups and then one of the groups was randomly assigned “high status.” Control sessions were also conducted in which no status distinction was introduced. In all sessions, participants subsequently played two games governed by distinct social norms: a trust game and a cheap talk game where lying was possible. In the control sessions, norm compliance was higher in same-group interactions, consistent with previous research demonstrating that normative obligations are often parochial. In treatment sessions, parochialism vanished and was replaced by noblesse oblige: members of high status groups exhibited more norm compliance in all of their interactions. Finally, in game roles not governed by an unambiguous social norm, identity had no direct impact on behavior. Considered together, the results suggest that the channel through which social identity directly impacts behavior is norm compliance and that the nature of this impact depends crucially on the relationship between involved groups.

Inequality and Relative Ability Beliefs

In this study I present experimental evidence of a novel channel yielding inequality persistence. In an initial experiment, results suggest that individuals respond to salient inequality by adjusting their performance beliefs to justify the inequality. Subsequent experiments reveal: i) that it is beliefs about relative ability, an ostensibly stable trait, rather than effort provision that respond to inequality; and that ii) unequal pay in an initial task affects willingness to compete on a subsequent task for male participants. Taken together, these patterns may cause inequality to become self-perpetuating. I conclude by discussing some implications of these findings.

Social Risk and the Dimensionality of Intentions

Previous research has documented a behavioral distinction between “social risk,” or risk caused by human factors, and natural risk. In particular, people tend to demand a premium on the probability of a favorable outcome in order to expose themselves to a social source of risk rather than a natural source of risk. Several explanations for what drives this social risk premium have been offered—most prominently, (i)an aversion to a counterparty’s potentially malign intentions and (ii) a more general aversion to ceding control to someone with conflicting interests. We propose that a fundamental determinant of the social risk premium may relate to a counterparty’s capacity to engage in intentional action. We employ a between-subjects experimental design in which we manipulate subjects’ capacity for intentional action. Our design allows us to identify the component of the social risk premium related to an aversion to betrayal, independent of any aversion to ceding control. Furthermore, our results show that in...