Ostracism and theft in heterogeneous groups

Ostracism, or exclusion by peers, has been practiced since ancient times as a severe form of punishment against transgressors of laws or social norms. The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive analysis on how ostracism affects behavior and the functioning of a social group. We present da...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inExperimental economics : a journal of the Economic Science Association Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 193 - 222
Main Authors Baier, Alexandra, Balafoutas, Loukas, Jaber-Lopez, Tarek
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.03.2023
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Behavioral/Experimental Economics
Economic opportunities
Economic theory
Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods
Economics
Economics and Finance
Game Theory
Inequality
Microeconomics
Operations Research/Decision Theory
Original Paper
Ostracism
Productivity
Punishment
Resource allocation
Retaliation
Social and Behav. Sciences
Social norms
Stigma
Theft
K42
Ostracism
C91
Rehabilitation
Heterogeneous groups
C92
Social dilemma
Theft
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Summary:Ostracism, or exclusion by peers, has been practiced since ancient times as a severe form of punishment against transgressors of laws or social norms. The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive analysis on how ostracism affects behavior and the functioning of a social group. We present data from a laboratory experiment, in which participants face a social dilemma on how to allocate limited resources between a productive activity and theft, and are given the opportunity to exclude members of their group by means of majority voting. Our main treatment features an environment with heterogeneity in productivity within groups, thus creating inequalities in economic opportunities and income. We find that exclusion is an effective form of punishment and decreases theft by excluded members once they are re-admitted into the group. However, it also leads to some retaliation by low-productivity members. A particularly worrisome aspect of exclusion is that punished group members are stigmatized and have a higher probability of facing exclusion again. We discuss implications of our findings for penal systems and their capacity to rehabilitate prisoners.
ISSN:1386-4157
1573-6938
DOI:10.1007/s10683-022-09758-7