Blaming the Refugees? Experimental Evidence on Responsibility Attribution

Grimm, Stefan und Klimm, Felix (8. März 2018): Blaming the Refugees? Experimental Evidence on Responsibility Attribution. Münchener Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Beiträge (VWL) 2018-2

Abstract

Do people blame refugees for negative events? We propose a novel experimental paradigm to measure discrimination in responsibility attribution towards Arabic refugees. Participants in the laboratory experience a positive or negative income shock, which is with equal probability caused by a random draw or another participant’s performance in a real effort task. Responsibility attribution is measured by beliefs about whether the shock is due to the other participant’s performance or the random draw. We find evidence for reverse discrimination: Natives attribute responsibility more favorably to refugees than to other natives. In particular, refugees are less often held responsible for negative income shocks. Moreover, natives with negative implicit a sociations towards Arabic names attribute responsibility less favorably to refugees than natives with positive associations. Since neither actual performance differences nor beliefs about natives’ and refugees’ performance can explain our finding of reverse discrimination, we rule out statistical discrimination as the driving force. We discuss explanations based on theories of self-image and identity concerns.

• Dokumententyp: Paper
• Keywords: Refugees, discrimination, responsibility attribution
• Fakultät: Volkswirtschaft > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 330 Wirtschaft
• JEL Classification: C91, D03, D83, J15
• Sprache: Englisch

Literaturliste

Ai, C. and Norton, E. C. (2003). “Interaction terms in logit and probit models.” Economics Letters, 80(1), 123–129.

Akerlof, G. A. and Kranton, R. E. (2000). “Economics and identity.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), 715–753.

Andreoni, J. and Bernheim, B. D. (2009). “Social image and the 50–50 norm: A theoretical and experimental analysis of audience effects.” Econometrica, 77(5), 1607–1636.

Ariely, D., Bracha, A. and Meier, S. (2009). “Doing good or doing well? Image motivation and monetary incentives in behaving prosocially.” American Economic Review, 99(1), 544–55.

Bartling, B. and Fischbacher, U. (2011). “Shifting the blame: On delegation and responsibility.” Review of Economic Studies, 79(1), 67–87.

Bartling, B., Fischbacher, U. and Schudy, S. (2015). “Pivotality and responsibility attribution in sequential voting.” Journal of Public Economics, 128, 133–139.

Becker, G. M., DeGroot, M. H. and Marschak, J. (1964). “Measuring utility by a single-response sequential method.” Behavioral Science, 9(3), 226–232.

Byrd, D. T., Hall, D. L., Roberts, N. A. and Soto, J. A. (2015). “Do politically non-conservative whites “bend over backwards” to show preferences for black politicians?” Race and Social Problems, 7(3), 227–241.

Carneiro, P., Heckman, J. J. and Masterov, D. V. (2005). “Labor market discrimination and racial differences in premarket factors.” Journal of Law and Economics, 48(1), 1–39.

Chen, Y. and Li, S. X. (2009). “Group identity and social preferences.” American Economic Review, 99(1), 431–457.

Di Tella, R., Perez-Truglia, R., Babino, A. and Sigman, M. (2015). “Conveniently upset: Avoiding altruism by distorting beliefs about others’ altruism.” American Economic Review, 105(11), 3416–3442.

Dutton, D. G. (1973). “Reverse discrimination: The relationship of amount of perceived discrimination toward a minority group on the behaviour of majority group members.” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, 5(1), 34–45.

Fershtman, C. and Gneezy, U. (2001). “Discrimination in a segmented society: An experimental approach.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(1), 351–377.

Fischbacher, U. (2007). “z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments.” Experimental Economics, 10(2), 171–178.

Gneezy, U., Saccardo, S., Serra-Garcia, M. and van Veldhuizen, R. (2016). “Motivated self-deception, identity and unethical behavior.” Working Paper, mimeo.

Goldin, C. and Rouse, C. (2000). “Orchestrating impartiality: The impact of “blind” auditions on female musicians.” American Economic Review, 90(4), 715–741.

Greene, W. (2010). “Testing hypotheses about interaction terms in nonlinear models.” Economics Letters, 107(2), 291–296.

Greenwald, A. G., Uhlmann, E. L., Poehlman, T. A. and Banaji, M. R. (2009). “Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 17–41.

Greiner, B. (2015). “Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE.” Journal of the Economic Science Association, 1(1), 114–125.

Grossman, Z. and Van Der Weele, J. J. (2017). “Self-image and willful ignorance in social decisions.” Journal of the European Economic Association, 15(1), 173–217.

Heckman, J. J. (1998). “Detecting discrimination.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(2), 101–116.

Hewstone, M. (1990). “The ‘ultimate attribution error’? A review of the literature on intergroup causal attribution.” European Journal of Social Psychology, 20(4), 311–335.

Hewstone, M., Rubin, M. and Willis, H. (2002). “Intergroup bias.” Annual Review of Psychology, 53(1), 575–604.

Jones, E. E. and Harris, V. A. (1967). “The attribution of attitudes.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3(1), 1–24.

Krieger, N. (2014). “Discrimination and health inequities.” International Journal of Health Services, 44(4), 643–710.

Lacetera, N. and Macis, M. (2010). “Social image concerns and prosocial behavior: Field evidence from a nonlinear incentive scheme.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 76(2), 225–237.

Lane, T. (2016). “Discrimination in the laboratory: A meta-analysis of economics experiments.” European Economic Review, 90, 375–402.

Lang, K. and Manove, M. (2011). “Education and labor market discrimination.” American Economic Review, 101(4), 1467–1496.

Mazar, N., Amir, O. and Ariely, D. (2008). “The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance.” Journal of Marketing Research, 45(6), 633–644.

Ockenfels, A. and Werner, P. (2014). “Beliefs and ingroup favoritism.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 108, 453–462.

Pettigrew, T. F. (1979). “The ultimate attribution error: Extending Allport’s cognitive analysis of prejudice.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 5(4), 461–476.

Ross, L. (1977). “The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 173–220.

Shapiro, T., Meschede, T. and Osoro, S. (2013). “The roots of the widening racial wealth gap: Explaining the black-white economic divide.” Research and Policy Brief.

Zizzo, D. J. (2010). “Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments.” Experimental Economics, 13(1), 75–98.