| Summary: | In this paper we
investigate the effect of moral suasion on ingroup favouritism. We report a
well-powered, pre-registered, two-stage 2x2 mixed-design experiment. In the
first stage, groups are formed on the basis of how participants answer a set of
questions, concerning non-morally relevant issues in one treatment (assorting
on non-moral preferences), and morally relevant issues in another treatment
(assorting on moral preferences). In the second stage, participants choose how
to split a given amount of money between participants of their own group and
participants of the other group, first in the baseline setting and then in a
setting where they are told to do what they believe to be morally right (moral
suasion). Our main results are: (i) in the baseline, participants tend to
favour their own group to a greater extent when groups are assorted according
to moral preferences, compared to when they are assorted according to non-moral
preferences; (ii) the net effect of moral suasion is to decrease ingroup
favouritism, but there is also a non-negligible proportion of participants for
whom moral suasion increases ingroup favouritism; (iii) the effect of moral
suasion is substantially stable across group assorting and four pre-registered
individual characteristics (gender, political orientation, religiosity,
pro-life vs pro-choice ethical convictions).
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