Self-interested behaviour as a social norm

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that economic terminology influences social norms and behavior in experiments more significantly than financial incentives, highlighting the impact of language on collective cooperation.

Contribution

It reveals how economic terminology affects social norm adherence and behavioral outcomes, emphasizing language's role in shaping human behavior in experimental settings.

Findings

Economic terminology causes larger behavioral changes than typical financial incentives.

Participants' behavior is mainly driven by social norms influenced by language.

Language framing impacts collective cooperative behavior more than monetary rewards.

Abstract

Language can exert a strong influence on human behaviour. In experimental studies, it is for example well-known that the framing of an experiment or priming at the beginning of an experiment can alter participants' behaviour. However, few studies have been conducted to determine why framing or priming specific words can alter people's behaviour. Here, we show that the behaviour of participants in a game-theoretical experiment is driven mainly by social norms, and that participants' adherence to different social norms is influenced by the exposure to economic terminology. To explore how these terminology-driven changes impact behavior at the system level, we use established frameworks for modeling collective cooperative behaviour. We find that economic terminology induces a behavioural difference which is larger than that caused by financial incentives in the magnitude usually employed in experiments and simulation. These findings place an increased responsibility on scientists and science communicators, as scientific terminology is increasingly communicated to the general population.