Abstract
Human behavior is framed by several social structures. In the present study, we focus on two of the most important determinants of social structures: social norms and political orientation. Social norms are implicit models of shared expectations about how people should behave in different social contexts. Although humans are very sensitive to violations in social norms, there are important individual differences in our sensitivity to these violations. The second concept this study focuses on is political orientation that is define by a continuum from left (liberal) to right (conservative). Individual political orientation has been found to be related to various individual traits, such as cognitive style or sensitivity to negative stimuli. Here, we propose to study the relation between sensitivity to social norm violation and political orientation. Participants completed a task presenting scenarios with different degrees of social norm violation and a questionnaire to measure their political opinions on economic and identity issues. Using hierarchical regressions, we show that individual differences in sensitivity to social norm violation are partly explained by political orientation, and more precisely by the identity axis. The more individuals have right-oriented political opinions, the more they are sensitive to social norm violation, even when multiple demographics variables are considered. Our results suggest that political orientation, especially according to identity issues, is a significant factor of individual differences in social norm processing.
Highlights
Social structure guides human behavior through explicit and implicit rules that frame our decisions and our actions
The main goal of the present study was to explore the link between political orientation and sensitivity to social norm violation
Since both right-wing political ideology and sensitivity to social norm violation can be powerful tools to reduce ambiguity and uncertainty in one’s social environment [16, 17, 33, 34], we hypothesised that right political orientation would be positively associated to sensitivity to social norm violation
Summary
Social structure guides human behavior through explicit and implicit rules that frame our decisions and our actions. One important determinant that contributes to social structure by facilitating large-scale coordination is social norms [1]—unwritten rules about how people should behave in society. Social norms structure our social environment by guiding our own behavior and by framing our expectations of how others should behave in specific situations [2]. On one hand, when social norms are well understood and respected, everyone can more predict the course of social interactions, which reduces the uncertainty in our social environment [3]. On the other hand, when social norms are absent or violated, it can increase this uncertainty [1].
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