Ethnicity and gender influence the decision making in a multinational state: The case of Russia

TL;DR

This study examines how ethnicity and gender influence decision-making behaviors in Russia through experiments on cooperation, trust, and egalitarianism, revealing cultural differences and socialization effects among Russians and Yakuts.

Contribution

It provides novel insights into how ethnicity and gender shape economic decision-making in a multinational state like Russia, highlighting intra-country cultural variations.

Findings

Yakuts show higher baseline cooperation and trust than Russians.

Socialization increases cooperation among Russians but not among Yakuts.

Gender differences in cooperation and trust diminish after socialization.

Abstract

Individuals' behavior in economic decisions depends on such factors as ethnicity, gender, social environment, personal traits. However, the distinctive features of decision making have not been studied properly so far between indigenous populations from different ethnicities in a modern and multinational state like the Russian Federation. Addressing this issue, we conducted a series of experiments between the Russians in Moscow (the capital of Russia) and the Yakuts in Yakutsk (the capital of Russian region with the mostly non-Russian residents). We investigated the effect of socialization on participants' strategies in the Prisoner's Dilemma game, Ultimatum game, and Trust game. At the baseline stage, before socialization, the rates of cooperation, egalitarianism, and trust for the Yakuts are higher than for the Russians in groups composed of unfamiliar people. After socialization, for the Russians all these indicators increase considerably; whereas, for the Yakuts only the rate of cooperation demonstrates a rising trend. The Yakuts are characterized by relatively unchanged indicators regardless of the socialization stage. Furthermore, the Yakutsk females have higher rates of cooperation and trust than the Yakuts males before socialization. After socialization, we observed the alignment in indicators for males and females both for the Russians and for the Yakuts. Hence, we concluded that cultural differences can exist inside one country despite the equal economic, politic, and social conditions.