Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/245659 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14608
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper provides experimental evidence showing that members of a majority group systematically shift punishment on innocent members of an ethnic minority. We develop a new incentivized task, the Punishing the Scapegoat Game, to measure how injustice affecting a member of one's own group shapes punishment of an unrelated bystander ("a scapegoat"). We manipulate the ethnic identity of the scapegoats and study interactions between the majority group and the Roma minority in Slovakia. We find that when no harm is done, there is no evidence of discrimination against the ethnic minority. In contrast, when a member of one's own group is harmed, the punishment "passed" on innocent individuals more than doubles when they are from the minority, as compared to when they are from the dominant group. These results illuminate how individualized tensions can be transformed into a group conflict, dragging minorities into conflicts in a way that is completely unrelated to their behavior.
Subjects: 
punishment
minority groups
inter-group conflict
discrimination
scapegoating
lab-in-field experiments
JEL: 
C93
D74
D91
J15
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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