A Cross-Cultural Experimental Study on Interactive Decision-Making Involving Germans, Israelis and Palestinians
Final Report Abstract
The inter-cultural trilateral project between Germans, Israelis and Palestinians became the center of a more extensive cross-cultural and inter-cultural research program many team members were involved in. Ideas and methods realized in the trilateral project initiated and provided research input for those other projects, but the trilateral project also benefitted from them. The trilateral project differed, however, in that its focus - and the big challenge - was on generating behavioral data in a truly interactive environment. Interactions between Germans, Israelis and Palestinians were necessary to deal with our central research topics: Does discrimination play a role in strategic interactions of subjects from environments that differ in religious background, political relations, economic performance, language, and geographical distance? How do beliefs influence actions, what is the interplay between beliefs about own-country and foreign-country counterparts and behavior? Both research topics require interactions between experimental subjects of different cultures. They cannot be analyzed by cross-cultural investigations alone because in the latter experimental subjects only interact within their own culture and behavior is compared across cultures. If one, nevertheless, would do so, inferences might be incorrect because people might behave differently and have different expectations regarding foreigners than regarding compatriots. Even though a large body of cross-culture experimental studies exists by now, comparatively few inter-cultural ones exist - probably due to the technical, organizational and administrative challenges. The trilateral project contributed to overcome existing deficiencies. Real (not virtual) experimental participants located in Germany, Israel and Palestine interacted with each other and got the necessary information in their respective native languages. We find substantial intercultural trust, reciprocity and cooperation across borders in all experiments. Moreover, we do not find pronounced negative intercultural discrimination, an important fact replicated over experiments and stable over time. We do find, however, significantly different levels of trust, reciprocity and cooperation across cultures. Actors seem to have correct expectations about the behavior that prevails within their own culture yet they tend to ignore the potential differences between cultures. This can be a source of misinterpretation of motives in inter-cultural interactions. We find face-to-face communication between Palestinian and Israeli participants to dramatically increase cooperation rates. This speaks to encourage direct dialogues to overcome communication deadlocks between these parties. Behavior also differs with regard to how members of the different cultures react to the presentation of a decision task. When confronted with an identical situation presented either as an opportunity to give money to or to take money from a counterpart Palestinians show substantially higher cooperation under the give than under the take frame. Germans and Israelis, however, behave in a similar way. These findings are also reflected in their beliefs. These findings might be important within the communication context. It seems to matter for, say, negotiation outcomes how arguments are presented. As to the psychological underpinnings of discrimination, self-esteem apparently is related to out-group discrimination. Not discriminating a compatriot seems to decrease self-esteem, whereas favoring an in-group member functions to maintain initial levels of self-esteem. The results of the trilateral project found media interest and were positively reflected.
Publications
- (2009): WASATIA - The Spirit of Islam, Wasatia Publishing, Jerusalem
Dajani Daoudi, Mohammed S.
- (2010): Fragility of Information Cascades: An Experimental Study using Elicited Beliefs, Experimental Economics, 13(2) 121-145
Bracht, J., F Koessler, E. Winter and A. Ziegelmeier
- (2010): On the Prevalence of Framing Effects Across Subject Pools in a Two Person Cooperation Game, Journal of Economic Psychology, 31, 2010, 849-859
Goerg, S.J. and G. Walkowitz
- (2010): Similarities and Differences when Building Trust: The Role of Culture, Experimental Economics 13, 260-283
Bornhorst, F., A. Ichino, O. Kirchkamp, K. Schlag, and E. Winter
- (2010): Transparency among Peers and Incentives. Rand Journal of Economics 41, 504-523
Winter, E.
- 2010): lncentive Reversal. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 1(2) 133-147
Winter, E.
- (2011): It Pays to Pay - Big Five Personality Influences on Cooperative Behavior in an Incentivized and Hypothetical Prisoner's Dilemma Game, Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 2011, 300-304
Lönnqvist, J.-E., M. Verkasalo, and G. Walkowitz
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.10.009) - (2011): Situational Power Moderates the Influence of Self-Transcendence vs. Self-Enhancement Values on Behavior in Ultimatum Bargaining, Journal of Research in Personality, 45, 2011, 336- 339
Lönnqvist, J.-E., G. Walkowitz, M. Verkasalo, and P.C. Wichardt
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2011.03.003) - (2011): The Framing of Games and the Psychology of Play, Games and Economic Behavior, 73 (2011) 459-478
Dufwenberg, M., S. Gächter and H. Hennig-Schmidt
(See online at https://dx.doi.Org/10.1016/j.geb.2011.02.003) - (2012): Actions and Beliefs within and across Borders - A Trust Experiment Involving Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians, Discussion Paper
Goerg, S. J., H. Hennig-Schmidt, R. Selten, G. Walkowitz, and E. Winter
- (2012): Rational Emotions in the Lab, Social Neuroscience, 7(1), 11-17
Meshulam, M., E. Winter, G. Ben Shahar and Y. Aharaon
- (2012): The 'Short Five' (S5): Measuring Personality Traits Using Comprehensive Single Items, European Journal of Personality, 26(1), 2012, 13-29
Konstabel, K., J.-E Lönnqvist, G. Walkowitz, K. Konstabel, and M. Verkasalo
