Bidirectional associations between descriptive and injunctive norms

• Published in: Organizational behavior and human decision processes Vol. 129; pp. 59 - 69
• Main Authors: Eriksson, Kimmo, Strimling, Pontus, Coultas, Julie C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Inc 01.07.2015; Elsevier Science Publishing Company, Inc
• Subjects: Automatic association; Cognition & reasoning; Conformity; Descriptive norms; Frequency dependence; Implicit association test; Injunctive norms; matematik/tillämpad matematik; Mathematics/Applied Mathematics; Moral judgments; Morality; Norms; Priming; Recall; Social influence; Social norms; Social sciences; Studies; Social influence; Frequency dependence; Injunctive norms; Automatic association; Descriptive norms; Priming; Recall; Conformity; Moral judgments; Implicit association test
• ISSN: 0749-5978; 1095-9920; 1095-9920
• DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2014.09.011

•There is a strong automatic association between descriptive and injunctive concepts, such as “common” and “moral”.•Also explicit inferences between norm types strongly link what is common with what you ought to do.•In recall of social norms, descriptive and injunctive information are often mixed up.•Information about descriptive norms, even in another land, affects people’s moral judgments.•The common–moral association could contribute to emergence and upholding of injunctive norms. Modern research on social norms makes an important distinction between descriptive norms (how people commonly behave) and injunctive norms (what one is morally obligated to do). Here we propose that this distinction is far from clear in the cognition of social norms. In a first study, using the implicit association test, the concepts of “common” and “moral” were found to be strongly associated. Some implications of this automatic common–moral association were investigated in a subsequent series of experiments: Our participants tended to make explicit inferences from descriptive norms to injunctive norms and vice versa; they tended to mix up descriptive and injunctive concepts in recall tasks; and frequency information influenced participants’ own moral judgments. We conclude by discussing how the common–moral association could play a role in the dynamics of social norms.