Favoritism and Fairness in Teams

Abstract

We experimentally study how people resolve a tension between favoritism and fairness when allocating a profit in a team production setting. Past research shows that people tend to favor their ingroup at the cost of an outgroup when allocating a given amount of money. However, when the money to be allocated depends on joint production, we find that most players allocate proportionally according to others’ relative contributions, irrespective of their social identity affiliations. We discuss the implications of our findings on how distributive norms could shape team cooperation.

Lingbo Huang

Professor of Economics