تمرکز و اثرات اطلاعاتی هنجارها بر رفتار طرفدار اجتماعی

This paper reports an experiment examining the effect of social norms on pro-social behavior. We test two predictions derived from work in psychology regarding the influence of norms. The first is a “focusing” influence, whereby norms only impact behavior when an individual’s attention is drawn to them; and the second is an “informational” influence, whereby a norm exerts a stronger impact on an individual’s behavior the more others he observes behaving consistently with that norm. We find support for both effects. Either thinking about or observing the behavior of others produces increased pro-social behavior – even when one expects or observes little pro-social behavior on the part of others – and the degree of pro-social behavior is increasing in the actual and expected pro-social behavior of others. This experiment eliminates strategic influences and thus demonstrates a direct effect of norms on behavior.

We report the results of an experiment testing the direct influence of social norms on behavior. Based on prior work in psychology, we test for two possible kinds of such influence. First, we explore whether norm compliance exhibits a “focusing” effect, by which norms exert an influence on behavior only when they are primed with cues from the environment. In two focusing treatments, we find evidence of such an effect. Drawing subjects’ attention to the likely behavior of others or to others’ prescriptions for appropriate behavior both increase the frequency of pro-social behavior to very similar extents. Moreover, showing subjects the actual behavior of others, as in our informational treatment, produces an increase in pro-social behavior, even though most of these observed others behaved selfishly. Thus, all of our interventions appear to produce the focusing effect of norms, leading to increased pro-social behavior on average. Second, we test for an “informational” influence of norms, whereby individuals are more likely to engage in pro-social behavior when they observe others doing so. Our informational treatment generally demonstrates such a complementary relationship, though it appears to be non-monotonic. While previous experiments suggest such a relationship, ours is the first to demonstrate it using a non-strategic one-shot decision context. This is important for carefully demonstrating that observation of others’ behavior exerts a direct influence on behavior, absent strategic and payoff considerations. Our experiment is also valuable in that it builds on recent work in social psychology, testing the precise ways in which norms influence behavior. We find that these influences appear to operate in an economic context involving personal vs. social tradeoffs that is familiar and of interest to economic researchers (see Camerer & Fehr, 2004). Of course, our experiment is just a starting point for understanding how norms influence behavior. For instance, it is possible that other kinds of norms might operate in different ways – there may be norms upon which individuals are always focused or there may be norm-related behaviors that are uninfluenced by the behavior of others. Moreover, it might be interesting to explore the possibility that norm-compliance may “snowball” through iterated observation.28 It is also worth nothing that this research represents a first step with the ultimate goal of developing a theoretical model of norms that includes both the informational and focusing influences. Previous models account for behavior similar to the mimicry produced by the informational influence (Jones, 1984 and Bernheim, 1994). However, one might also account for the focusing influence by introducing a state-dependent variable (influenced by environmental cues) that mediates the complementary relationship between one’s action and what one observes others doing. As our experiment reveals, there are ways in which norms influence behavior – often significantly and counter-intuitively – that merit further attention in economics.