Past research shows that ethnic diversity reduces the ability to sanction norm violators, ultimately undermining cooperation. We test this directly by experimentally varying the ethnic composition of groups playing a dictator game with third-party punishment among two ethnic groups along the Kenya–Tanzania border. We also implement a structurally identical game where the endowment division is randomly determined in order to isolate a punishment motivation from the motivation to rectify income inequality. While costly income adjustment in both games is driven primarily by norm violations and inequality aversion, the ethnic composition of groups also influences sharing and sanctioning behavior in Kenya but not Tanzania, consistent with documented differences in the strength of nationalism across the two countries. However, the way in which shared ethnicity affects sanctioning in Kenya—namely, increased punishment of out-group violations against in-group members—is at odds with theories that anticipate that costly sanctioning will primarily target coethnics.

Ecological validity is vital to experimental research because designs that are too artificial may not speak to any real-world political phenomenon. One such concern is treatment of self-selection: if individuals in the real-world self-select treatments, such as political communications, how well does the sample average treatment effect estimate the effects of message exposure for those individuals who would—if given the choice—opt-in to and out of receiving treatment? This study shows that randomization masks effect heterogeneity between individuals who would select different messages if given the choice. Yet, such selections are themselves complex, revealing additional challenges for realistically studying treatments prone to self-selection. The evidence of effect heterogeneity raises questions about the appropriateness of random assignment experiments for studying political communication and the results more broadly advance our understanding of citizens’ selection into and responses to communications when, as they often do, have choice over what messages to receive.

Researchers are interested in running experiments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which often include financially incentivized measures of risk preferences. However, it can be that gambling is forbidden and these measures may either be illegal or result in non-random refusal of subjects to participate. If individuals derive utility from warm glow or otherwise enjoy giving, then risk preferences apply to that utility too. Even in the absence of personal stakes, if risk will be borne by others, warm glow will lead subjects to behave in a manner consistent with their preferences over risk for private consumption. I examine how paid risk elicitation mechanisms correlate with measures incentivized by charitable contributions. Results suggest that subjects behave almost identically under paid and charitable stakes. Charitable measures may provide behavioral means by which to measure risk preferences, in populations where gambling is forbidden.

This paper discusses how audit studies can be adapted to test the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing discrimination. We conducted an adapted audit experiment to test whether making officials aware of bias could reduce levels of racial bias. While the limitations of our design make it difficult to assess where information alone can reduce bias, our study makes two important contributions. First, we replicate prior studies by showing that white, local elected officials are less responsive to black constituents. That local officials exhibit biased behavior is particularly worrisome, as local government is often the level that most directly affects citizens’ daily lives. Second, we provide several suggestions for future audit studies that draw from the strengths and weaknesses of our own design. We hope that they will help improve future work on identifying and reducing discrimination.

Substantial research concludes that favoritism toward members of people's ingroup, or ingroup bias, motivates people to oppose public programs that assist needy outgroup individuals. I argue that a gap in the empathic capacity for ingroup and outgroup members motivates and maintains ingroup bias in helping behavior and is sensitive to contextual cues that trigger anxiety. Using a novel experimental design, Study 1 demonstrates that anxiety exacerbates the outgroup empathy gap. Study 2 replicates these findings with an explicit measure of outgroup empathy. Study 3 shows that the outgroup empathy gap causes individuals to become less supportive of helping needy outgroup members. These studies suggest that opposition to welfare programs may go beyond simple prejudice.

Iyengar et al. (1984, The Evening News and Presidential Evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(4): 778–87) discovered the media priming effect, positing that by drawing attention to certain issues while ignoring others, television news programs help define the standards by which presidents are evaluated. We conducted a direct replication of Experiment 1 by Iyengar et al. (1984, The Evening News and Presidential Evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(4): 778–87) with some changes. Specifically, we (a) collected data from Japanese undergraduates; (b) reduced the number of conditions to two; (c) used news coverage of the issue of relocating US bases in Okinawa as the treatment; (d) measured issue-specific evaluations of the Japanese Prime Minister in the pre-treatment questionnaire; and (e) performed statistical analyses that are more appropriate for testing heterogeneity in the treatment effect. We did not find statistically significant evidence of media priming. Overall, the results suggest that the effects of media priming may be quite sensitive either to the media environment or to differences in populations in which the effect has been examined.