Who Discriminates? Evidence from a Trust Game Experiment Across Three Societies

Abstract

Do people's individual characteristics influence the extent to which they discriminate against particular groups? We introduce an incentive-compatible measure of an individual's tendency to discriminate on others' different social identities that takes into account the costs of discrimination. In particular, we elicit participants' willingness to discriminate (WTD) in their investments to make their decisions dependent on others' social identities using a laboratory trust game experiment with 545 participants in three international locations: Malaysia, China and the UK. Analysis of our WTD measure shows that discrimination differs depending on discriminators’ religious, ethnic and national group identities, as well as on their political and religious values. Overall our results support the psychological distinctiveness of WEIRD participants found in other studies.

Keywords: discrimination, experiment, willingness to discriminate, Trust, culture.