How Group Identification Distorts Beliefs

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_66F147065C9A
Type
Report: a report published by a school or other institution, usually numbered within a series.
Publication sub-type
Working paper: Working papers contain results presented by the author. Working papers aim to stimulate discussions between scientists with interested parties, they can also be the basis to publish articles in specialized journals
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
How Group Identification Distorts Beliefs
Author(s)
Cacault  M. P., Grieder  M.
Institution details
University of Lausanne
Issued date
2015
Abstract
This paper investigates whether people have distorted beliefs about the ability of the social groups they identify with. We find that experimentally manipulated identification with a randomly composed group leads to overconfident beliefs about fellow group members' performance on an intelligence test. We also find that stronger group identification leads people to put more weight on positive signals, and less weight on negative signals, about their group's relative performance on the test. Our results suggest that beliefs about group ability can be distorted in a similar fashion as beliefs about individual ability. This in-group bias in beliefs has important economic consequences when group membership is used to make inference about an individual's characteristics, as in hiring or judicial decisions. We discuss the potential implications of this bias for economic theories of discrimination.
Create date
23/08/2015 9:53
Last modification date
21/08/2019 6:16
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