دانلود رایگان مقاله پیوند دو طرفه بین هنجار توصیفی و مقدماتی

abstract

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.

General discussion

A key feature of all human societies is that behavior is governed by social norms to some extent. In this paper we have addressed a fundamental question about the cognition of social norms: Is information about descriptive and injunctive norms processed separately? Based on the typical co-occurrence of descriptive and injunctive norms in real life we proposed the common–moral association hypothesis, according to which commonness and morality should tend to be automatically associated. This hypothesis, as well as various implications of it, was supported in a number of experiments. A strong association was found using implicit as well as explicit measures (Studies 1–2). In memory experiments we found a systematic tendency for injunctive and descriptive information to be mixed up in recall (Studies 3–6). Finally, priming participants with descriptive information about specific behaviors K. Eriksson et al. / Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 127 (2015) 59–69 67 influenced their moral judgments of these behaviors (Studies 7–8). Taken together, these studies establish the existence of an interesting psychological phenomenon. They also open up several lines of inquiry for the future.