Abstract
Exclusion can damage group member's health and work performance. The central objective of the study is to understand the patterns of exclusion and whether the information on the likelihood of being excluded helps or harms the victims. In our laboratory study, we invite a set of subjects about whom we have information in multiple dimensions, including age, gender, body type, face shape, eye and hair color, willingness to trust and reciprocate, degree of altruism, etc. Subjects are assigned to groups of six. Using the distributions of the attributes, we create fictional person cards and ask the subjects to rank them according to the expected likelihood that they will be excluded by their group of six. Subjects receive a positive payoff for each person card that they rank on the same position as ranked by the group in total. The subject whose attributes are closest to the person card that is ranked with the highest likelihood to be excluded by the group is selected as the group's victim and receives a reduced payoff. In the baseline treatment, the subjects provide an initial ranking, before having a group discussion via computer chat. The information on the initial ranking is not provided by the experimenter. After the discussion, the final rankings are submitted and the game ends with payoffs and no repetition. In the revealed treatment, the initial ranking decision phase is followed by an information phase, in which the potential victim - given the initial rankings - is revealed by the experimenter. The remaining part of the game is the same as in the baseline treatment.