Norm Avoiders: The Effect of Optional Descriptive Norms on Charitable Donations
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Date
2021-03-01
Authors
Andersson, Per A.
Erlandsson, Arvid
Västfjäll, Daniel
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
Abstract
Knowing the descriptive norm concerning others' prosociality could affect your behavior, but would you seek out or avoid such knowledge? This high-powered preregistered experiment explores the effect of both forced and optionally revealed descriptive norms on real monetary donations. These norms were established by learning the proportion of previous participants who had donated to a charitable organization that the respondent now was asked to donate to. For those learning about a norm, participants were more likely to donate if they were shown that a majority donates, compared with if they were shown that a minority donates. For the participants who were asked if they wanted to reveal the norm or not, we found that about half choose to reveal the norm. Those who avoided revealing the norm donated less frequently; both compared with revealers and with those who were
forced to view the norm. However, these norm avoiders also donate a higher mean
amount. Taken together, this hints at norm avoiders being composed of both altruistic
and non-altruistic people, with fewer of those who are undecided. This type of norm avoidance may be more related to information avoidance motives rather than mere curiosity or reactance. The present findings can inspire further research into the motives of norm avoidance.
Description
12 pages