Heterogeneous groups overcome the diffusion of responsibility problem in social norm enforcement

Przepiorka, Wojtek; Diekmann, Andreas

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0208129

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 67 publications

(91 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The risk that one subject may lose her endowment if not enough others' help may lead to a slower decline in helping rates compared with cooperation in public goods games studying group mergers. Thus, in line with Przepiorka and Diekmann [71] who show that heterogeneity of subjects may be beneficial for coordination in volunteer's dilemma situations, a clash of norms by heterogeneous groups does not necessary lead to bad outcomes.…”

Section: Discussion Of the Results And Limitations Of The Studysupporting

confidence: 70%

“…The helping game has features from the volunteer's dilemma. Recent evidence from volunteer's dilemma games suggests that heterogeneous groups compared with homogeneous groups may be better able to coordinate on pro-social outcomes (Przepiorka and Diekmann [71]). This would imply that, if two groups with diverging helping norms merge, helping may be similar (or even higher) in the Merged Group treatment compared with helping in the Big Group treatment.…”

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

When Two Become One: How Group Mergers Affect Solidarity

Schmitz

2019

Games

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Solidarity in teamwork situations is important for the success and longevity of teams. This paper studies how helping group members is affected when groups are randomly merged and increase in size. Group mergers put social norms that are prevailing in previously small groups to the test as new team members may not share the same norms and values. I present results from an experiment in which subjects interact in groups and face the decision to help a group member who is in need of help due to an exogenous shock. Subjects interact in small groups in the first part of the experiment and groups are randomly merged to form big groups in the second part of the experiment. Helping rates are higher in merged groups compared with big groups that stay in the same constellation throughout the experiment. Moreover, in merged groups, high helping norms are more influential compared with low helping norms.

show abstract

Section: Discussion Of the Results And Limitations Of The Studysupporting

confidence: 70%

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Two Become One: How Group Mergers Affect Solidarity

Schmitz

2019

Games

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…When a norm is in place, people not only react negatively to violations, they also expect that others will react negatively (Bicchieri 2017). Accordingly, norms researchers often study norms by examining factors affecting either sanctioning (e.g., Horne 2001;Przepiorka and Diekmann 2018;Winter and Zhang 2018) or normative expectations about how others are likely to react to a behavior (e.g., Álvarez-Benjumea and Winter 2020;Horne, Dodoo, and Dodoo 2013;Stoebenau et al 2019; see also Mollborn's 2009 and 2010 use of embarrassment to capture such expectations). Here, we focus on normative expectations-how much people expect others will approve or disapprove of a behavior.…”

Section: Theory and Predictionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing an Integrated Theory: Distancing Norms in the Early Months of Covid-19

Horne

Johnson

2021

Sociological Perspectives

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We draw on norms theory to develop hypotheses about norms regulating social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic. We identify two theoretical approaches—the consequentialist and social cues approach—and argue that understanding norms will be enhanced by integrating these two approaches. We apply these general theoretical approaches to the Covid-19 pandemic to suggest concrete hypotheses regarding distancing norms. We test our hypotheses using two vignette experiments. We find that when the consequences of behavior are clear, both behavior consequences and social cues independently affect norms. But when the consequences of a behavior are ambiguous, behaviors and social cues interact to affect norms. Theoretically, our results provide the first empirical test of an integrated theory of norms, showing that in ambiguous situations an integrated approach produces more accurate predictions than either the behavior consequences or social cues approach alone. Substantively, our paper helps to explain Covid-19 distancing norms and variation in those norms across political orientation. Our findings have implications for understanding support for and compliance with public health directives.

show abstract

“…In everyday life, individual heterogeneity is the rule rather than the exception 17 . The importance of incorporating heterogeneity in experiments is increasingly recognized [18][19][20][21][22] . One ubiquitous type of heterogeneity concerns the returns from the public good.…”

Section: Heterogeneous Groups Cooperate In Public Good Problems Despimentioning

confidence: 99%

Heterogeneous groups cooperate in public good problems despite normative disagreements about individual contribution levels

Otten

Buskens

Przepiorka

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Norms can promote human cooperation to provide public goods. Yet, the potential of norms to promote cooperation may be limited to homogeneous groups in which all members benefit equally from the public good. Individual heterogeneity in the benefits of public good provision is commonly conjectured to bring about normative disagreements that harm cooperation. However, the role of these normative disagreements remains unclear because they are rarely directly measured or manipulated. In a laboratory experiment, we first measure participants’ views on the appropriate way to contribute to a public good with heterogeneous returns. We then use this information to sort people into groups that either agree or disagree on these views, thereby manipulating group-level disagreement on normative views. Participants subsequently make several incentivized contribution decisions in a public goods game with peer punishment. We find that although there are considerable disagreements about individual contribution levels in heterogeneous groups, these disagreements do not impede cooperation. While cooperation is maintained because low contributors are punished, participants do not use punishment to impose their normative views on others. The contribution levels at which groups cooperate strongly relate to the average normative views of these groups.

show abstract

Heterogeneous groups overcome the diffusion of responsibility problem in social norm enforcement

Cited by 17 publications

References 67 publications

When Two Become One: How Group Mergers Affect Solidarity

When Two Become One: How Group Mergers Affect Solidarity

Testing an Integrated Theory: Distancing Norms in the Early Months of Covid-19

Heterogeneous groups cooperate in public good problems despite normative disagreements about individual contribution levels

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About