  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.
