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‘Everybody’s doing it’: on the persistence of bad social norms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

David Smerdon Open the ORCID record for David Smerdon [Opens in a new window] ,
Theo Offerman  and
Uri Gneezy
David Smerdon*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Theo Offerman
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Uri Gneezy
Affiliation:
Rady School of Management, UCSD, San Diego, USA
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

We investigate how information about the preferences of others affects the persistence of ‘bad’ social norms. One view is that bad norms thrive even when people are informed of the preferences of others, since the bad norm is an equilibrium of a coordination game. The other view is based on pluralistic ignorance, in which uncertainty about others’ preferences is crucial. In an experiment, we find clear support for the pluralistic ignorance perspective . In addition, the strength of social interactions is important for a bad norm to persist. These findings help in understanding the causes of such bad norms, and in designing interventions to change them.

Keywords

Social normsPluralistic ignoranceSocial interactionsEquilibrium selectionConformity

JEL classification

Z10: General D90: General‡ D70: General C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 392 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-019-09616-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

We acknowledge the University of Amsterdam Behavior Priority Area for providing funding for the experiment.

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