CeDEx Brown Bag Seminar - Pierce Gately

Title: Misperceptions and intergroup cooperation

Abstract: How groups perceive each other can impede or facilitate intergroup cooperation, which is necessary to solve large scale collective action problems. If groups harbour negative feelings towards each other, it can foster an 'us' vs 'them' mentality which undermines societal progress by curtailing cooperation beyond group lines. A canonical finding in experimental literature is that most people are conditional cooperators, willing to cooperate if they believe others will do likewise. For such individuals’ beliefs about the cooperativeness of others are central to determining their own behaviour. In intergroup contexts perceived polarisation between groups can be self-reinforcing if individuals expect intergroup prejudicial attitudes to translate into discriminatory actions. We propose a series of studies to unpack the behavioural channels through which perceptions of polarisation between groups impact intergroup cooperation.