Conflicting identities and cooperation between groups: experimental evidence from a mentoring programme

Abstract

Well-functioning human societies require the integration of vulnerable minorities, yet leading scientific theories conflict on how easily diverse groups cooperate. We experimentally investigate cooperation in 14 centres of a mentoring programme where participants have two possible natural identities—individuals raised under legal guardianship, suffering a negative stereotype (G; n = 112) and users without such a social stigma (NG; n = 82). Participants played a prisoners’ dilemma game with an anonymous partner from the same centre (centre-ingroup) and from another centre (centre-outgroup). For individuals without a history within-centre interaction, we find centre-outgroup favouritism among G and centre-ingroup favouritism among NG. However, the longer G individuals have been in the centre the more centre-ingroup favouritism they display, while the opposite is true for NG. Regardless of within-centre history, both G and NG individuals cooperate less with the centre-ingroup (versus outgroup) as the probability that the centre-ingroup is G increases. Thus, we observe patterns of centre-outgroup and natural-outgroup favouritism among G which challenge theoretical frameworks exclusively focusing on ingroup favouritism. Our findings highlight the roles of system-justification and stereotypes in intergroup cooperation and have implications for the integration of vulnerable groups and the optimization of social policy programmes.