Research

The power of leadership in changing social norms in heterogenous societies with Marie Claire Villeval and Fabio Galeotti

Changing a social norm is complex even when the norm has become detrimental for the society notably because individuals have a strong pressure to conform to it. We investigated experimentally whether a leader can accelerate or delay such a change through their recommendations by coordinating the expectations of individuals, and whether this depends on the leader’s own preference and leadership style. Building on the dynamic setting introduced by Andreoni et al. (2021) we confirm that norms are sticky in the absence of any coordination device. We show that leaders are remarkably successful in moving the society to a more efficient norm, regardless of the speed at which their own and the society’s preferences evolve. However, normative change happens slower or faster depending on whether the leade prioritizes their own preference or the preferences of the majority. In a follow-up experiment we show that introducing imperfect communication among citizens induces leaders to consider more the preferences of the majority of the society when recommending a normative action.

Political tribalism and voter preferences with Fabio Galeotti and Daniel Zizzo

The identification of electors with the candidates in public elections can sway their decision either towards or against a candidate. We investigate whether and to what extent electors are willing to sacrifice the quality of their representatives in public elections for their political identification. In Experiment 1, we introduce a trade-off between the competence and the political closeness between two candidates. We find that electors tend to have a bias towards candidates who share a similar political identity as theirs even if this results in a loss in profit. No such bias is observed when the trade-off is between competence and art identity. To test whether the observed in-group bias translates to other real identities such as sports, we ran a second experiment in which we compared the political identification bias to that of a sport identification. We find that the political bias is still present. Sport preferences also induce a bias in voting decisions, but to a lower extend.

Leadership in the management of normative conflict with Marie Claire Villeval and Lata Gangadharan

The presence of group members deriving different returns from contributing to a public good generates a normative conflict between equality and efficiency. We introduce a redistribution mechanism that can help groups achieve both efficiency and equality through reciprocity.  We test the attraction of this mechanism for group members and whether they are able to implement it in the absence of any coordination device and in the presence of a leader. We find that a majority of individuals favor this mechanism but are not able to coordinate to implement it in their group. Leaders favoring this mechanism help groups increase efficiency while restoring ex-post equality of earnings through redistribution.