Social identity and social preferences An empirical exploration

In this thesis, I focus on the connection between social identity and social preferences. Will a friend of a decision maker be more likely to win a prize, even when her competitor bribes? Is a person with a high social status more generous or selfish than her low-status counterpart? Will employees work harder once they know they are better off than their peers? The answers to these questions are crucial for economists to form a firm understanding of behaviours in social contexts; and consequently, bridge the gap between social motives and economic actions. Since social identity is multidimensional, I focus on one dimension of identity in each chapter. To derive clear causal relationship between identity and behaviour, I use laboratory experiments in chapters 2 and chapter 3. To expand external validity, I adopt nationally representative survey data in chapter 4 and an online survey experiment in chapter 5. The thesis renders interesting findings: in-group favouritism vanishes once bribes are involved (chapter 2), high-status players are less self-fish and more efficiency-concerned when they feel entitled to the status (chapter 3), reciprocal behaviours can be generalized to workplace with a representative sample (chapter 4), and wage comparison with similar workers seems ineffective with an online experiment (chapter 5).