The Impact of Social Identity on Trust and Altruism: Experimental evidence from young and elderly adults in China

In this study, we employ lab-in-the-field experiments to study the impact of social identity on individuals' trust, trustworthiness and altruism. W conduct our experiments in college students and retired individuals in Shanghai, China. We have finished two rounds of pilot studies and plan to conduct the experiments in the next several months. First, we randomly assign subjects who self-report as communist party members into treatment and control groups. In the treatment group, we prime subjects' CPP membership and ask them to play standard dictator games. We vary the dictator games in the following ways: each individual is endowed with some game points and asked to donate to some specific organizations. We prepare four non-profit organizations, differing in their goals and ownership. In the second experiment, we will one-to-one pair subjects and ask them to play a trust game. We vary the game so that some subjects are revealed as CPP to their partner and others' identity is kept confidential. After the experiment, we will collect individuals' subjective attitudes and preferences information to explore the mechanism. We expect CPP's identity has causal impact on individuals' trust, trustworthiness and altruism.