Economic Distress and Out-Group Discrimination

Last registered on January 14, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Economic Distress and Out-Group Discrimination
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0003785
Initial registration date
January 11, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 14, 2019, 3:19 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
briq and University of Bonn

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
University of Zurich
PI Affiliation
University of Zurich
PI Affiliation
Stanford University

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2019-01-14
End date
2019-07-26
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Conflict between groups of humans is as old as mankind. Millions of people have perished as a result of inter-group violence over the course of history, and continuous conflict has arguably shaped human behaviors and forms of collaboration. Milder forms of outgroup discrimination and in-group bias, such as xenophobia and agitation against immigrants, increasingly dominate modern-day politics in developed countries. What drives people to hate others who are different from themselves? We propose to examine a longstanding hypothesis: whether poverty and corresponding economic distress has a causal effect on out-group discrimination and xenophobia. We conduct experiments amongst respondents with low socio-economic status. We will randomly transfer funds that are sufficient to improve the economic condition of study participants, and examine their attitudes towards ‘others’ – comparing responses with other participants who are equally poor, but did not receive an income transfer. Hence, in contrast to previous work, our approach exogenously manipulates actual economic distress and thereby allows us to measure its causal impact on xenophobic attitudes and behavior. Moreover, our study design will reveal whether targeted income transfers are an effective tool in reducing hatred of foreigners and will allow us to illuminate different psychological mechanisms that shape the relation between poverty and out-group bias
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Fouka, Vasiliki et al. 2019. "Economic Distress and Out-Group Discrimination." AEA RCT Registry. January 14. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3785-1.0
Former Citation
Fouka, Vasiliki et al. 2019. "Economic Distress and Out-Group Discrimination." AEA RCT Registry. January 14. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3785/history/40137
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We conduct experiments amongst respondents with low socio-economic status. We will randomly transfer funds that are sufficient to improve the economic condition of study participants, and examine their attitudes towards ‘others’ – comparing responses with other participants who are equally poor, but did not receive an income transfer.
Intervention Start Date
2019-01-21
Intervention End Date
2019-07-22

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
We focus on two outcomes.

First, we will measure xenophobic behavior using a donation experiment involving real financial consequences. Following the literature, we choose immigrants as the target outgroup and manipulate whether the donation goes to an organization that actively combats immigration, an organization that supports immigration, and a neutral organization. Specifically, we inform subjects that we will donate $100 on their behalf to three different organizations: i) the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) as an anti-immigration organization, ii) the National Immigration Forum (NIF) as a pro-immigration organization, and iii) the American Cancer Society (ACS) as a neutral control organization. Subjects have the opportunity to reduce or eliminate those donations. Decisions are implemented using a slider. For each organization, the slider is set at $100. By moving the slider to the left, subjects can reduce the donation in steps of $1. The donation decisions for FAIR and NIF reveal the extent to which the cash transfer reduces anti-immigration and/or increases pro-immigration attitudes. We add ACS for obfuscation purposes.

Second, we will administer an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure subjects’ implicit bias towards outgroups (immigrants) relative to US citizens. We adapted the IAT to our specific context. Subjects will be instructed to classify names (e.g., Houssain, John) and words (e.g., terrible, love) into the four categories “Immigrant vs. American” and “Good vs. Bad” as fast as possible using the left and right arrows on their keyboard. The underlying idea of this test is that individuals with stronger implicit xenophobic attitudes will be faster when “Good” and “American” or “Immigrant” and “Bad” paired rather than “Bad” and “American” or “Immigrant” and “Good” because the former pairs exhibit stronger mental associations.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
1. We elicit subjects’ self-reported emotional state and stress levels to test this longstanding hypothesis.

2. We will administer a Symbol-Correspondence Task to obtain a measure of cognitive functioning.

3. We elicit individuals’ sensitivity to social desirability using the well-established social desirability scale.

4. We measure participants’ self-reported self-esteem and locus of control.

5. We assess whether financial distress affects the perception of immigrants as a threat to society. Living through times of financial hardship might increase focus on specific aspects of in-group-outgroup relations and as a consequence might change the perception of the out-group. We focus on three different aspects: First, immigration could be seen as increased competition for jobs in the labor market or resources in the social welfare system. Second, immigration could be associated with concerns about crime and terrorism. Third, immigration might be seen as a threat to the in-group’s values and traditions. All these perceptions might shift once the financial situation improves. To test this empirically, we elicit participants’ perceptions on all three aspects.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We conduct experiments amongst respondents with low socio-economic status. We will randomly transfer funds that are sufficient to improve the economic condition of study participants. We then measure behavior and attitudes towards outgroups, using a series allocation decisions as well as an implicit association test. We compare responses between the treatment group (received transfer) and a control group (no transfer).
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Participants are randomized into a treatment and a control group. This is done in the experimenter's office by a computer. One third will be assigned to the treatment group and receive an unconditional $200 cash transfer to their UAS ClinCard ten days after the baseline survey is closed. The control group will not receive any cash transfer.

We will stratify the randomization based on the following two dimensions:
• A dummy variable whether subjects are white or non-white
• A dummy variable for the following subgroups: those who score below-median in the communal moral values index (5, 6) and those who score above-median (those whose score equals the median will be randomly assigned to one of the two).

This results in four strata (white/high moral values index; white/low moral values index; non-white/high moral values index; non-white/low moral values index). To deal with the possibility of missing values in these two baseline variables, we will create a fifth strata consisting of the group of respondents with missing values.
Randomization Unit
individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
500 individual participants
Sample size: planned number of observations
500 individual participants
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
500 individual participants - 1/3 in treatment, 2/3 in control
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
500 subjects permit us to detect an effect of about 0.27 standard deviations between the treatment and the control group at a 5 percent significance level and with a power of 0.8. This calculation of the minimum detectable effect is conservative because it does not account for the stratified randomization based on race and the index of communal moral values.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of Southern California Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2018-11-29
IRB Approval Number
UP-18-00721
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials