The age of consequences: Unraveling conflict's impact on social preferences, norm enforcement, and risk-taking

Beyond the direct destructive nature of war, conflict may also impact social preferences, norms, and risk-taking behavior. This paper examines the enduring impact of conflict on preferences and behavior by studying different versions of public goods games conducted nearly two decades after the Rwandan genocide, leveraging variation in radio reception among villages in 1994, which determined exposure to hate-propaganda messages inciting conflict. Results indicate that communities exposed to greater violence exhibit increased cooperation, active punishment, and risk-taking. Exploiting the heterogeneity in participants' ages of conflict experience, enhanced cooperation is entirely driven by those who were children during the genocide, while norm enforcement through punishment and reward is more prominent among older individuals. Risk-taking increases are observed across all age groups. The results allow for a reassessment of previous research and highlight the psychological imprint of conflict exposure in line with the literature on early childhood development.