The effect of nudging personal and injunctive norms on the trade-off between objective equality and efficiency

TL;DR

This research investigates how nudging personal and injunctive norms influences decisions balancing equality and efficiency, revealing that nudges have similar effects and that individuals differ in norm adherence based on moral identity dimensions.

Contribution

The study provides novel insights into the differential effects of nudging personal versus injunctive norms and their interaction in moral decision-making contexts.

Findings

Nudging personal and injunctive norms produces similar effects.

No additive effect when both norms are nudged in the same direction.

Individuals tend to follow either personal or injunctive norms when they are in opposition.

Abstract

We report three pre-registered studies (total N=1,799) exploring the effect of nudging personal and injunctive norms in decisions that involve a trade-off between objective equality and efficiency. The first two studies provide evidence that: (i) nudging the personal norm has a similar effect to nudging the injunctive norm; (ii) when both norms are nudged towards the same direction, there is no additive effect; (iii) when the personal norm and the injunctive norm are nudged towards opposite directions, some people tend to follow the personal norm, while others tend to follow the injunctive norm. Study 3 tests whether these two classes of people, those who tend to follow the injunctive norm and those who tend to follow the personal norm, map onto the two sub-dimensions of Aquino and Reed's moral identity scale. We find partial evidence of this hypothesis: people higher in the symbolisation dimension are weakly more likely to follow the injunctive norm; however, we do not find any evidence that people higher in the internalisation dimension are more likely to follow the personal norm.