Social Norms: New Perspectives on How We Perceive Them and Their Consequences

Abstract

Social norms are a fundamental feature of social interactions that have been studied for decades across disciplines from management to psychology and sociology to economics. This symposium examines new interdisciplinary perspectives on social norms. The first two papers offer new perspectives on how social norms are inferred. First Dannals and Miller examine how social norms are shaped by the distribution of behavior in the groups, in particular how outlying group members can shift perceptions of social norms. Then Tannenbaum, Fox and Goldstein examine how partitions in choice menus shift perceptions of social norms leading to shifted choices. The last two papers offer insight into the consequences of social norms. Krupka, Leider and Jiang examine norms of promise-keeping. They demonstrate how social norms of promise-keeping affect decisions even during times of exogenous uncertainty in an economic game inspired by the home mortgage crisis. In the fourth paper, Mu and Gelfand use neuroscience methods to offer interdisciplinary insight to the processes underlying the punishment of social norm violators. Their cross-cultural research demonstrates how violations of social norms trigger punishments and how this can vary across cultures depending upon norm strength. Finally, Michael Morris, an expert in social norms research will offer commentary on the presented papers and insights into the future of social norms research in management.