Are the delinquents more prone to enforce the norm in the group?
 
Game suggested: Public good game with punishment
Over the last decades it has been shown that there is a vast heterogeneity in the way people take others interests into account for their own decision-making. Fehr and Gächter (2000, 2002) have shown that even a minority of individuals that are willing to punish non-cooperative behavior, even if it is costly for them, can drive a majority of selfish motivated humans to cooperate in social dilemma.
However, remains ambiguous who actually are these minorities, which are referred to as “homo reciprocans” (Falk 2003)? There are some indications that the process of punishing is linked to emotions. Juvenile delinquent behavior can also be a result of emotional acts and the impaired ability to swallow one’s anger. Therefore it is interesting to investigate if delinquent adolescents are more likely to enforce cooperation norms, and consequently provide an environment of cooperation and collective prosperity.
Therefore we suggest playing a repeated public goods game (PGG) with punishment similar to Fehr and Gächter (2002).
Experimental design:
Four subjects play in a group. Each subject is endowed with 20 token. The subject can either contribute his endowment into a private good or into the group’s public good.
All token contributed to the public good will be multiplied by two and equally shared among all group members. Contributions to the private good will neither be multiplied nor they will be shared among other group members. After observing others contribution into the public good and receiving one fourth of it subjects have the opportunity to punish other group members by assigning deduction points among them. Deduction points are costly and can be bought in pairs of three at the cost of one token.
This entire procedure is repeated six times (periods) for each group. At the end of the experiment one period is randomly selected and paid out to the subjects.
Time estimation: approx. 6 min per period
Money estimation: approx. x CHF per subject
Does the revealing of one’s social identity changes the propensity to cheat?
Game suggested: Dice game with informational pre-stage
The main reasoning behind this study is that social labelling per se has an independent function that affects individual behavior. We would like to see whether the knowledge that the social identity of an actor is known to the experimenter may prime participants towards higher degree of cheating. We are going to manipulate the definition of delinquency in order to see the interaction effect between the labeling as a delinquent and actual history of delinquency.
Experimental design:
Subjects are asked to participate in an experiment. The compensation for the participation is composed of a) a Show-up fee and b) the earning within the experiment. The level of the show up fee is determined by a dice rolled by the participant him/herself.
Treatment:
A.     Baseline (C + NL, NC +NL)
B.     Some subjects with a delinquent history are asked to participate for that reason (C + CL).
C.     Some subjects with a delinquent history are told that they participate because they don’t have a delinquent history. (C + NCL)
D.    Some subjects without a delinquent history are asked to participate for that reason. (NC + NCL)
E.     Some subjects without a delinquent history are asked to participate because there delinquent history. (NC + CL)
Time estimation: 5 min. in total
Money estimation:
How the revealing of social identity affects the trust among individuals?
Game suggested: Two-player deception game with informational pre-stage
 
Experimental design:
Time estimation: 5 min. in total
Money estimation: