Economics Research Community Seminar

Title: Perceptions of intergroup conflict
Date: 29 September 2022
Time: 13:00-14:00
Location: NUBS 2.14

Guest Speaker: Ori Weisel a senior lecturer in the Organizational Behavior group at the Coller School of Management in the Tel Aviv University. He received his PhD Social Psychology and Rationality in 2011 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and afterwards he was a research fellow in the Max Planck Institute for Economics in Jena, Germany, and in the Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics at the University of Nottingham.

If you would like to attend, please register using the following link: https://forms.office.com/r/z1bUpLjsfE.

Abstract
One of the most recurrent hypotheses in the intergroup conflict literature is the “conflict-cohesion hypothesis”, which states that intergroup conflict increases intragroup cohesion and cooperation. Among the most robust experimental tests of the conflict-cohesion hypothesis are those based on experimental team games, which allow to examine the effect of conflict while holding the Intragroup structure constant. Experimental team games also point to parochial cooperation—as opposed to outgroup spite—as the main motivation for individual participation in conflict. I will present experimental work that incorporates the perception of conflict, which has been overlooked by past research. The results of this work, as well as real world evidence, strongly suggest that the willingness to participate in conflict, and the motivation for doing so, crucially depend on whether conflict is perceived and construed at the individual or at the group level. Depending on the level of perception, conflict can either increase or decrease intragroup cooperation, and the motivation for cooperation can be either parochial cooperation or outgroup spite.