What Economists Can Learn from “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities for Personal and Collective Success” by Jay J. Van Bavel and Dominick J. Packer

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please, look at the attached report.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

suggestion: accept, it's a simple and nice book review

Author Response

Thank you for your kind comments. English language has been checked as requested. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments:

1. Should include a citation for the book.
2. Revise the text to be more direct and clear. Here are three examples. 
1. Instead of “The fundamental contribution of Van Bavel and Packer relies in the emphasis they give to the idea that the social self is highly flexible, and that people are ‘chameleonic’”, write something like “The fundamental contribution of Van Bavel and Packer is the idea that the social self is highly flexible and ‘chameleonic’”.
2.  Instead of “Sharing a common identity might be enough to change the attitude towards other people, also in contexts where racial bias would be expected to emerge’ write something like “Sharing a common identity might be enough to change the attitude towards other people, even in contexts where racial bias would be expected to emerge”.
3. Instead of “The perceived distance between a subject and the ingroup, but also between the subject and the outgroup, can be affected by agents’ actions, and thus manipulated in several ways”, write something like “The perceived distance between a subject and the ingroup, but also between the subject and the outgroup, can be manipulated in several ways”.
4. Instead of “Such distance” write something like “The social distance between the subject and the outgroup”.
3. Revise the discussion of mixed-race teams; it is confusing. Who is an in-group mate? Are all teams mixed or do some contain only one race? My first reading made me think that all teams were mixed; but, then, I don’t understand how “regardless of race” means. 
4. The result does not show that we are not wired for racism. It does suggest that racism diminishes as social distance decreases.
5. “The reason why, also in minimal group paradigm experiments, people express a preference for ingroup members, is because a certain social identity is made more salient than another, and this opens the road to the possibility of shifting group boundaries to form new identities” is confusing. Are people expressing preference for certain members of an ingroup after emphasizing certain characteristics about those members? Are you sure that the preference is because of social identity and that no other reason exists?
6. “thoughts” should read “thought”.
7. The reader needs more details about the “the findings of another of their experiments with mixed-race participants in which White and Black subjects played a game where opponents could cheat.” Exactly when does “trust” and “bias” occur?
8. The paper does not convince me that “‘leveraging the collective mind’ [6] can be much more effective than providing monetary incentives”. Perhaps something like, “leveraging the collective mind’ [6] can be an effective way to affect behavior”.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The commentary is clear and well written.  The topic is introduced with clarity and gives the right ideas about the issue.

Author Response

Thank you for your kind comments. English language has been checked as requested. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for implemeting all my comments.

I only have two minor comments:

Lines 60-61: I think it is "worthy of our concern" and not "worth of our concern". But I am not sure: maybe also the latter form is right.

Line 100: Put "Social Psychology" in Italics font. In the current version, only the "S" of "Social" is in Italics font.

Author Response

Thank you for your kind comments. Both suggestions have been implemented.