BID Brown Bag Seminar: The Development of Social Preferences

Research Cluster

Speaker:	Brit Grosskopf, University of Exeter
Date:	Tuesday 11 October 2016
Time:	12.30 - 13.30
Location:	Constantine Leventis Teaching Room, Building One

Further details

This paper examines how social preferences and parochialism develop with age. This is done using a range of mini-dictator games from which we classify 655 subjects into variety of behavioural types. We expand on previous developmental studies of pro-sociality and parochialism by analysing individuals aged 9 - 67, and by employing a cross study where participants from Spain interact with participants from China, Morocco Senegal and Spain. We find evidence of a non-linear relationship between egalitarianism and age, with egalitarianism decreasing as children grow into teenagers and young adults, but increasing as they grow older. The inverse is found to be true for altruism. A gender differential is found to emerge in teenage years, with females becoming less altruistic but more egalitarian than males. In contrast to previous economic studies of development, we report evidence of significant out-group favouritism expressed as increased altruism, and decreased egalitarianism and spite. This is uniquely expressed towards those individuals from Senegal. This effect is found across all subject ages, but is moderated in adulthood.