The False Enforcement of Unpopular Norms

Abstract

Prevailing theory assumes that people enforce norms in order to pressure others to act in ways that they approve. Yet there are numerous examples of "unpopular norms" in which people compel each other to do things that they privately disapprove. While peer sanctioning suggests a ready explanation for why people conform to unpopular norms, it is harder to understand why they would enforce a norm they privately oppose. The authors argue that people enforce unpopular norms to show that they have complied out of genuine conviction and not because of social pressure. They use laboratory experiments to demonstrate this "false enforcement" in the context of a wine tasting and an academic text evaluation. Both studies find that participants who conformed to a norm due to social pressure then falsely enforced the norm by publicly criticizing a lone deviant. A third study shows that enforcement of a norm effectively signals the enforcer's genuine support for the norm. These results demonstrate the potential for a vicious cycle in which perceived pressures to conform to and falsely enforce an unpopular norm reinforce one another.

Faking It Is Hard to Do: Entrepreneurial Norm Enforcement and Suspicions of Deviance

“…These explanations essentially suggest that cognitive difficulties prevent audience members from taking the enforcer's perspective even though the shoe is often on the other foot. 2 The experimental evidence presented by Willer et al (2009) is consistent with this suggestion. In their experiment, subjects were informed of a situation where three actors (1) were asked to privately evaluate a purportedly high-quality but actually nonsensical text, (2) had a public discussion in which one turned out to be a deviant and two turned out to be conformists, and (3) were asked to publicly evaluate their fellow group members.…”

“…Deepening the Puzzle Willer et al (2009) offer two possible explanations for why enforcement creates an illusion of sincerity despite rational suspicions that the enforcer might be trying to hide her own deviance. 1 One idea comes from research that suggests that human beings often err by projecting their own motivations onto others (Miller and McFarland 1991;Prentice and Miller 1993).…”

“…Subjects were more likely to think that the enforcer was more sincere in his compliance than the nonenforcer, which suggests that enforcement can occur without eliciting suspicions of ulterior motives. 3 The larger implication is that many norms might be enforced even if there is significant private dissent (see Study 1 and 2 in Willer et al [2009]). …”

“…But more recent research suggests that individual actors might gain private utility (i.e., "selective incentives"; Olson 1965) from enforcement (Adut 2004(Adut , 2012Becker 1963;Kuran 1995;Sunstein 1996:910-14). In particular, Willer, Kuwabara, and Macy (2009;cf. Centola, Willer, and Macy [2005] and Jordan et al [2016]) argue that audiences regard an enforcer as more sincere in her compliance than those who do not enforce even though the enforcer is actually more likely to have privately deviated from the norm and that the "illusion of sincerity" available from enforcement explains why individuals are often motivated to enforce.…”

“…In particular, social situations vary in the degree to which actors are charged with responding to normative deviance. At one end of the continuum, they might be mandated to assess one another's commitment to norms (e.g., Jordan et al 2016;Willer et al 2009). Someone who is given such a mandate cannot claim to be unaware of the deviance-that is, she does not enjoy "plausible deniability."…”