Opportunity Is Not Everything: An Experimental Investigation of the Role of Mistrust in Perpetuating Group Inequality

Abstract. Subordination of one people by another often has a cultural component, which shapes expectations. In a prior experiment in village India, we found that low caste children respond to incentives in the same way as their high caste counterparts when their caste identity is not mentioned, but do much worse when their caste status is made salient. To examine a mechanism for our result, we designed a new experiment that manipulates the scope for discretion in rewarding performance. When asked to accept or reject a (more than fair) gamble in which there is no scope for judgment by an experimenter, making caste salient does not produce a caste gap. Instead, it is in the case where there is scope for discretion that caste has an effect. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that making caste salient cues individuals at the bottom of the cultural hierarchy to expect prejudicial treatment, which undermines their motivation and contributes to the persistence of group inequality