Prosociality Beyond Ethnic Boundaries

This is the replication data and code used for the results reported in the article "Prosociality beyond in-group boundaries: A lab-in-the-field experiment on selection and intergroup interactions in a multiethnic European metropolis"

How does prosocial behavior extend beyond in-group boundaries in multiethnic societies? The current process of differentiation of Western societies presents an opportunity to better understand the tension between societal pressures forcing people outside the comfort zones of their familiar networks to constructively interact with unknown, diverse others and individual’s tendency toward homophily and in-group favoritism. We introduce a three-step model of out-group exposure that encompasses both the macro-structural conditions for intergroup encounter and micro-level relational dynamics of intergroup selection and interaction. Using a large-scale lab-in-the-field experiment with a representative sample of Italian natives and immigrants from the multiethnic city of Milan, we find that, when pushed to interact with non-coethnics, Italians generally treat them similarly to how they treat coethnics and value signs of social and market integration. However, when given the opportunity to select their interaction partners, Italians favor coethnics over immigrants. Taken together, these results help reconcile classical findings concerning the positive effects of intergroup contact with evidence documenting the persistence of out-group discrimination in selection processes.