IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v161y2020icp213-227.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From whom do we learn group norms? Low-ranking group members are perceived as the best sources

Author

Listed:
  • Dannals, Jennifer E.
  • Reit, Emily S.
  • Miller, Dale T.

Abstract

Social norm perception is ubiquitous in small groups and teams, but how individuals approach this process is not well understood. When individuals wish to perceive descriptive social norms in a group or team, whose advice and behavior do they prefer to rely on? Four lab studies and one field survey demonstrate that when individuals seek information about a team’s social norms they prefer to receive advice from lower-ranking individuals (Studies 1–4) and give greater weight to the observed behavior of lower-ranking individuals (Study 5). Results from correlation (Study 3) and moderation (Study 4) approaches suggest this preference stems from the assumption that lower-ranking team members are more attentive to and aware of the descriptive social norms of their team. Alternative mechanisms (e.g., perceived similarity to lower-ranking team members, greater honesty of lower-ranking team members) were also examined, but no support for these was found.

Suggested Citation

  • Dannals, Jennifer E. & Reit, Emily S. & Miller, Dale T., 2020. "From whom do we learn group norms? Low-ranking group members are perceived as the best sources," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 213-227.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:161:y:2020:i:c:p:213-227
    DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.08.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597820303721
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.08.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, "undated". "Third Party Punishment and Social Norms," IEW - Working Papers 106, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    2. Boles, Terry L. & Croson, Rachel T. A. & Murnighan, J. Keith, 2000. "Deception and Retribution in Repeated Ultimatum Bargaining," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 235-259, November.
    3. Kennedy, Jessica A. & Anderson, Cameron, 2017. "Hierarchical rank and principled dissent: How holding higher rank suppresses objection to unethical practices," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 30-49.
    4. Roberto A. Weber & Colin F. Camerer, 2003. "Cultural Conflict and Merger Failure: An Experimental Approach," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(4), pages 400-415, April.
    5. Rader, Christina A. & Soll, Jack B. & Larrick, Richard P., 2015. "Pushing away from representative advice: Advice taking, anchoring, and adjustment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 26-43.
    6. Sameer B. Srivastava & Amir Goldberg & V. Govind Manian & Christopher Potts, 2018. "Enculturation Trajectories: Language, Cultural Adaptation, and Individual Outcomes in Organizations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(3), pages 1348-1364, March.
    7. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Social norms and energy conservation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9-10), pages 1082-1095, October.
    8. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Social norms and energy conservation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1082-1095.
    9. Alison Wood Brooks & Francesca Gino & Maurice E. Schweitzer, 2015. "Smart People Ask for (My) Advice: Seeking Advice Boosts Perceptions of Competence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(6), pages 1421-1435, June.
    10. Noah J. Goldstein & Robert B. Cialdini & Vladas Griskevicius, 2008. "A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(3), pages 472-482, March.
    11. Schaerer, Michael & du Plessis, Christilene & Yap, Andy J. & Thau, Stefan, 2018. "Low power individuals in social power research: A quantitative review, theoretical framework, and empirical test," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 73-96.
    12. Bonaccio, Silvia & Dalal, Reeshad S., 2006. "Advice taking and decision-making: An integrative literature review, and implications for the organizational sciences," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 127-151, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valeria Superti & Cynthia Houmani & Ralph Hansmann & Ivo Baur & Claudia R. Binder, 2021. "Strategies for a Circular Economy in the Construction and Demolition Sector: Identifying the Factors Affecting the Recommendation of Recycled Concrete," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-32, April.
    2. Lyubykh, Zhanna & Alonso, Natalya M. & Turner, Nick, 2024. "Beyond allies and recipients: Exploring observers’ allyship emulation in response to leader allyship," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eugen Dimant & Tobias Gesche, 2021. "Nudging Enforcers: How Norm Perceptions and Motives for Lying Shape Sanctions," CESifo Working Paper Series 9385, CESifo.
    2. Heinicke, Franziska & König-Kersting, Christian & Schmidt, Robert, 2022. "Injunctive vs. descriptive social norms and reference group dependence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 199-218.
    3. Ajla Cosic & Hana Cosic & Sebastian Ille, 2018. "Can nudges affect students' green behaviour? A field experiment," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 2(1), pages 107-111, March.
    4. Bartels, Lara & Kesternich, Martin, 2022. "Motivate the crowd or crowd- them out? The impact of local government spending on the voluntary provision of a green public good," ZEW Discussion Papers 22-040, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    5. Denis Hilton & Nicolas Treich & Gaetan Lazzara & Philippe Tendil, 2018. "Designing effective nudges that satisfy ethical constraints: the case of environmentally responsible behaviour," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 17(1), pages 27-38, November.
    6. Bonan, Jacopo & Battiston, Pietro & Bleck, Jaimie & LeMay-Boucher, Philippe & Pareglio, Stefano & Sarr, Bassirou & Tavoni, Massimo, 2021. "Social interaction and technology adoption: Experimental evidence from improved cookstoves in Mali," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    7. Castro-Santa, Juana & Drews, Stefan & Bergh, Jeroen van den, 2023. "Nudging low-carbon consumption through advertising and social norms," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    8. Vandenbroele, Jolien & Slabbinck, Hendrik & Van Kerckhove, Anneleen & Vermeir, Iris, 2021. "Mock meat in the butchery: Nudging consumers toward meat substitutes," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 105-116.
    9. María Laura Alzúa & Habiba Djebbari & Amy J. Pickering, 2020. "A Community-Based Program Promotes Sanitation," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(2), pages 357-390.
    10. Özalp Özer & Upender Subramanian & Yu Wang, 2018. "Information Sharing, Advice Provision, or Delegation: What Leads to Higher Trust and Trustworthiness?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 474-493, January.
    11. Kwonsik Song & Kyle Anderson & SangHyun Lee & Kaitlin T. Raimi & P. Sol Hart, 2020. "Non-Invasive Behavioral Reference Group Categorization Considering Temporal Granularity and Aggregation Level of Energy Use Data," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-21, July.
    12. Choi, Sunghee & Hwang, Seok-Joon & Denzau, Arthur T., 2021. "Do households conserve electricity when they receive signals of greater consumption than neighbours? The Korean case," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    13. Löfgren, Åsa & Nordblom, Katarina, 2020. "A theoretical framework of decision making explaining the mechanisms of nudging," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 1-12.
    14. Jason Delaney & Sarah Jacobson, 2016. "Payments or Persuasion: Common Pool Resource Management with Price and Non-price Measures," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(4), pages 747-772, December.
    15. Olsthoorn, Mark & Schleich, Joachim & Faure, Corinne, 2019. "Exploring the diffusion of low-energy houses: An empirical study in the European Union," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 1382-1393.
    16. Schmidt, Robert J., 2019. "Do injunctive or descriptive social norms elicited using coordination games better explain social preferences?," Working Papers 0668, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    17. Komatsu, Hidenori & Nishio, Ken-ichiro, 2015. "An experimental study on motivational change for electricity conservation by normative messages," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 35-43.
    18. Holladay, J. Scott & Price, Michael K. & Wanamaker, Marianne, 2015. "The perverse impact of calling for energy conservation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-18.
    19. Sara Rafael Almeida & Joana Sousa Lourenco & Francois J. Dessart & Emanuele Ciriolo, 2017. "Insights from behavioural sciences to prevent and combat violence against women. Literature review," JRC Research Reports JRC103975, Joint Research Centre.
    20. Brade, Raphael, 2022. "Social Information and Educational Investment - Nudging Remedial Math Course Participation," MPRA Paper 113076, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:161:y:2020:i:c:p:213-227. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.