Language and intergroup discrimination. Evidence from an experiment

Dominique Cappelletti, Luigi Mittone and Matteo Ploner

No 1504, CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: Language is one of the most salient dimensions of ethnocultural identity and clearly marks who is and who is not a member of the group. We conduct an experiment to investigate the role of language in intergroup discrimination in the creation of social capital, here operationalised as a measure encompassing trust, trustworthiness, cooperation, and coordination. We observe the behaviour of the members of a minority language community when they receive the instructions written in their own idiomatic language and when they receive them written in the surrounding language. We find a language effect on behaviour, but this effect is gender specific. When deciding in the surrounding language, participants do not treat ingroup and outgroup members differently. When deciding in their own idiomatic language, females show intergroup discrimination and treat ingroup members more favourably compared to how they treat them when deciding in the surrounding language. We also observe that the behaviour participants exhibit in the experiment positively correlates with their attitudes as measured by the standard trust survey question used as a proxy for social capital.

Keywords: language; intergroup discrimination; social capital; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trn:utwpce:1504

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