Names Can Hurt You (by Cueing your Response to Incentives): Experimental Evidence on Identity and Development

We present an experiment that allows us to discriminate among several hypotheses about how identity affects behavior. In the experiment, boys from high and low castes in India solve mazes under piece rates and tournaments. Boys in castes that were traditionally Untouchable can solve mazes as well as high-caste boys and both can increase output under tournament incentives, compared to piece rate. Yet when caste identities are publicly revealed, performance generally declines but by a greater amount for the low caste and tournament incentives elicit zero or a perversely negative response. To explain these results, we argue that an individual has multiple worldviews (and of his place in the world) and that contextual changes cue a worldview that influences the preferences/behaviors he expresses. Our findings shed light on (a) why more salient caste boundaries appear to hurt school enrollment of both highand low-caste children in South Asia, (b) why relative to rural air ―[medieval] town air makes one free,‖ and (c) why groups fight over seemingly trivial rules of etiquette.