Costly inductions as a commitment-selection strategy: Assessing hazing's relationship with attrition in a college fraternity

Abstract

Social scientists have often claimed or implied that hazing selects out uncommitted newcomers in voluntary associations. Because groups that engage in hazing are generally secretive about their practices, there has never been a real-world, in situ test of this claim. Using an American social fraternity, we report the first real-world, longitudinal test of hazing's relationship with selective newcomer attrition. Our data are derived from six sets of fraternity inductees who experienced the fraternity's hazing induction process (N = 126). Our analyses suggest that experienced hazing severity is a predictor of attrition and that hazing severity differentially predicts the attrition of low-commitment newcomers. However, real-world fraternity inductions (and measurements thereof) are complex in ways that add important caveats to our findings. Our discussion focuses on the best means by which to confirm or disconfirm our results through future replications.