UC Santa Barbara

Deviance from normative behavior is not only prevalent in offline interactions, but those that take place online as well. Several theories have sought to address the notion of deviant behavior, but have done so with a focus on either individual or group-level behavior. In online contexts identities can easily switch (i.e., be made salient at either an individual level or a group level), and existing theorizing on deviant behavior does not take into account this identity salience as a factor in responding to deviance. The current study explores deviance from the lens of expectancy violations theory (an individual-level theory) and social identity approaches (a group-level perspective) simultaneously. A key notion in expectancy violation theory is also how individuals respond to ambiguous deviance through assessing the reward value of the deviant, which has not been explored with a social identity approach. To determine the effect of identity salience, type of deviance, and reward on perceptions of deviant behavior a 2 (primed identity: group, personal) x 2 (type of deviance: ambiguous, negative) x 2 (reward value: high, low) between-subjects factorial design experiment was used.

The study found no significant effects of group identity on perceptions of deviance for either type of deviance, nor significant effects of reward value (due to an unsuccessful manipulation). The reward value manipulation, while unsuccessful, created an opportunity to further explore the evaluation of reward in online contexts. Open-ended questions to assess how individuals evaluate reward revealed a confound with the deviance manipulation, as well as the role that trust, online platform/community, and amount of information plays in evaluation of rewardingness online. Future research directions for these two theoretical perspectives are discussed with regard to identity, deviance, and reward