Studies on Culture and Social Norms V

Some experiments have shown that people’s preferences on conformity to social norms may depend on context. Psychologists maintain that norms only influence behavior when one’s attention is drawn to them (focusing influence) and a norm has greater impact on one’s behavior when one observes others behaving in alignment with that norm (informational influence). Krupka and Weber (2009) use a simple one-shot binary dictator game to test this theory. In the experiment, the dictator can choose either X, which leads to a fair allocation ($5, $5), or Y, which gives rise to an unfair allocation ($7, $1). In descriptive focusing treatment, before assigning roles and making decisions, each subject was asked to guess the percentages of subjects who chose X and Y in a previous session. In Bicchieri (2005)’s terms, the subjects were focused on empirical expectations. In the informational focusing treatment, the subjects were asked to guess what percentages of subjects in a previous session had stated X and Y should be chosen, and hence focused on normative expectations. In informational treatment, each subject observed the choices made by four previous participants. Compared to the baseline treatment, subjects exhibited significantly more prosocial behavior in the focusing treatments. The informational treatment shows that individuals are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior when they observe others doing so, which is consistent with the results from Bicchieri and Xiao (2008). This experiment shows that contextual cues that remind the individual the existence of social norms greatly increase pro-social behavior. Hence norm compliance exhibits a focusing effect, and norms only impact behavior when an individual’s attention is drawn to them.

Cason and Mui (1998) also demonstrate the functioning of social influence similar to Krupka and Weber (2009)’s informational treatment in the setting of a sequential dictator game. In their experimental design, 4 subjects, denoted as subject 1 to 4, form a group. In stage 1, all subjects first indicate the amount of money P1 they want to take from the $40 pie in a dictator game with market setting. The information on the decision is then exchanged between subject 1 and 3, and between subject 2 and 4 in the Relevant Information treatment, while the information about the subject’s date of birth is exchanged in the Irrelevant Information
treatment between odd-numbered subjects and between even-numbered subjects. In stage 2, all subjects indicate the amount of money P1 they want to take from the $40 pie. The role of proposer and the receiver is then assigned randomly, either odd-numbered players or even-number players would be the sellers, and each seller can be the seller of only one stage, which are also randomly determined. Their results show that receiving relevant information makes subjects less likely to move to more self-regarding choices. They also find that subjects who exhibit more self-regarding behavior on their first decisions are less likely to change choices in the second stage, implying the sensitivity to social norms is heterogeneous among subjects.