UCLA

The human desire for belonging and group membership has long been recognized as a fundamental psychological need. From this need comes a tendency for people to look to others’ behavior as a clue for how they themselves should act. As a result, learning about the descriptive social norms for behavior can often cause people to assimilate their own behavior in the direction of the social norm. In this research, I explore factors influencing people’s perceptions of norms as well as people’s reactions to normative information and normative violations. In Chapter 1, we decompose normative comparisons into three separate components, each with their own causal contribution to people’s response to such comparisons: Target (the reference group to whom an individual is compared), Distance (how far the individual is from the Target), and Valence (whether the individual has over- or under-performed relative to this benchmark). In establishing these three distinct factors, we are better able to predict how people will respond to receiving normative comparison feedback. In Chapter 2 we use Norm Theory to explain what otherwise appears to be an aversion to utilizing algorithmic recommendations, even when such algorithms obviously outperform human judges. This research endeavor represents but one example of how otherwise puzzling human behavior can be better understood by considering the broader normative context. Finally, in Chapter 3 we document an ironic effect of behavioral interventions on people’s perceptions of descriptive social norms. We show that awareness of the presence of a nudge can be enough to lower people’s perceived descriptive social norm. Taken together, this body of research seeks to contribute to the theory and understanding of the causes and consequences of perceived descriptive social norms.