To cooperate or not to cooperate? : an analysis of ingroup favoritism among Syrian refugees

Does the experience of civil war promote in-group bias among survivors? We try to answer this question by analyzing cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma game among Syrian refugees in two host countries, Germany and Jordan. We use a between-subjects analysis to test our in-group cooperation hypothesis. We find that Syrians are more likely to cooperate when they are interacting with another Syrian participant than when they are interacting with a German or a Jordanian participant. While Syrian refugees self-report a feeling of relative welcome in the host country, punishment of cooperation norm violations by ingroup or out-group members does not differ significantly. We conclude that our results are more likely to be driven by in-group favoritism rather than out-group hostility.