![]() ![]() Increasingly, social norms are being used to encourage pro-social behaviour. Our results suggest that people will still tend to follow such norms. In fact, defaults may lead to norms occurring for reasons that run counter to the decision-maker’s interests, such as a company choosing the cheapest healthcare plan as a default. ![]() This is frequently attributed to our use of an opt-in registration system. Termed information cascade, this phenomenon emphasises how norms can snowball from potentially irrelevant starting conditions whenever we are influenced by people’s earlier decisions.ĭefaults may also lead to social norms that do not reflect people’s preferences but instead are driven by our tendency towards inaction.įor example, registered organ donors remain a minority in Australia, despite most Australians supporting organ donation. Well, if everyone before you followed the same thought process, it is perfectly possible that an initial arbitrary decision by some early restaurant-goers cascaded into one restaurant being popular and the other remaining empty. It’s a busy restaurant so it must be good, right? Shutterstock/EmmepiPhoto The cascade effectīut are we ever really presented with arbitrary norms that offer no rational reason for us to conform to them? If you see a packed restaurant next to an empty one, the packed restaurant must be better, right? Thus, our results suggest that self-categorisation may play a role in norm adherence. Importantly, for self-categorisation theory it does not matter whether a norm reflects people’s preference, as long as the behaviour is simply associated with the group. The basic idea is that people conform to the norms of certain social groups whenever they have a personal desire to feel like they belong to that group. Instead, our results support an alternative theory, termed self-categorisation theory. Such norms offer no useful information about the value of different options or potential social sanctions. Neither of these can explain our finding that people conform to arbitrary norms. The other common explanation is that failing to follow a norm may elicit negative social sanctions, and so we conform to norms in an effort to avoid these negative responses. One common explanation for norm conformity is that, if everyone else is choosing to do one thing, it is probably a good thing to do. Why would people behave in such a seemingly irrational manner? Our participants knew that the norms were arbitrary, so why would they conform to them? Is it the right thing to do? It was not caused by our participants not understanding that the norm was entirely arbitrary. It held over different participants and different moral dilemmas. Simply telling people that many other people had been randomly allocated to imagine reporting the robber increased their tendency to favour reporting the robber.Ī series of subsequent experiments, involving 631 new participants recruited online, showed that this result was robust. We found that participants followed the social norms of the previous people, even though they knew they were entirely arbitrary and did not reflect anyone’s actual choices. This made it clear that the norms were arbitrary and did not actually reflect anybody’s preferred choice. Instead, the norm was said to have occurred due to some faulty code in the experiment that randomly allocated the previous participants to imagining reporting or not reporting the robber. The remaining half were told that most other people had imagined not calling the police.Ĭrucially, however, we made it clear to our participants that these norms did not reflect people’s preferences. ![]() Half of our participants were told that most other people had imagined reporting the robber. ![]() Before they made their choice, we also presented information about how similar participants in a previous experiment had imagined acting during this dilemma. We posed this moral dilemma to 150 participants recruited online in our first experiment. Do you call the police or leave the robber be, so the orphanage can keep the money? Imagine you have witnessed a man rob a bank but then he gives the stolen money to an orphanage. Digital assistants like Alexa and Siri might not be offering you the best deals ![]()
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