Even when it costs them and no one is watching, a surprising number of people adhere to arbitrary rules; new research unpacks the powerful roles of intrinsic respect and social expectations.
Study: Why people follow rules. Image Credit: bfk / Shutterstock
A recent study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior examined why people follow rules. Rules are fundamental in maintaining a stable social order and fostering cooperation. Rules shape daily practices in professional, personal, or political affairs. Despite the omnipresence of rules, the reasons why people follow them are poorly understood. Do people follow rules due to self-interest, intrinsic respect for rules, obedience, or to meet social expectations? This question has been debated for decades in the behavioral sciences.
The study and findings
In the present study, researchers developed the CRISP framework to explore the behavioral principles of rule conformity. CRISP explained rule conformity (C) as a function of four motivations: intrinsic respect for rules (R), extrinsic incentives (I), social expectations (S), and social preferences (P). Based on this framework, the team performed four experiments involving 14,034 participants, primarily recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk, with replications in university labs and additional international samples to test robustness.
The researchers employed a minimalist online traffic light task, which involved moving a circle from a red traffic light to a finishing line. The task began with 20 money units (MUs), which decreased by 1 MU every second. Participants' earnings would be the highest when they moved as fast as possible to the line, meaning they could jump the traffic light at any time. The rule was to wait at the stoplight until it turned green.
Additionally, the team created an abstract version of the task to eliminate any naturalistic content that might influence individuals' behavior, wherein participants had to wait in a grey area until a cross disappeared. Experiments were run with and without control questions on the monetary consequences of rule conformity. The first experiment was conducted in two versions: a traffic light task (Experiment 1a) and an abstract version (1b). There was a high degree of rule conformity in Experiment 1a, with a mean rule-following rate of 70% in the absence of control questions and 57.8% with the control question condition, suggesting that making the monetary incentives to violate the rule more salient via control questions reduced rule-following. Experiment 1b was run with the control question only, with a rule-following rate of 59.7%. Replication in the laboratory and on additional platforms showed similar rates, indicating these findings are robust across samples.
Social expectations and conformity
The core element of Experiment 2 was the influence of social expectations on rule conformity. To this end, four tasks were designed such that rule following was costly without externalities. Two tasks elicited normative and descriptive beliefs about rule conformity from participants without prior experience with the task (spectators), while the other two tasks elicited conditional rule conformity in people as a function of descriptive and normative beliefs.
The team found that the rule generated strong descriptive and normative beliefs of rule conformity. Despite the asocial and non-strategic nature of the task, 90% of spectators perceived rule-breaking as socially inappropriate, and 80% perceived rule-following as socially appropriate. Furthermore, participants' elicited rule conformity was contingent upon their descriptive and normative beliefs.
Elicited rule following was also conditional on whether other subjects were believed to have conformed with the rule. Overall, the results suggested that even arbitrary rules generate social expectations that the rule should be followed. The mere existence of a rule was sufficient to elicit social expectations of rule-following.
Notably, the study found that approximately 23% of participants followed the rule unconditionally, regardless of their beliefs about others—a key marker of intrinsic respect for rules. Approximately 30% followed the rule conditionally, based on social expectations, while others tended to violate it.
Peer influence on rule-following
In Experiment 3, the team evaluated whether rule-following depends on the number of individuals following the rule. To this end, the traffic light task was modified so that participants could observe how others had previously behaved during the task. Subjects completed three iterations of the task. In the first iteration, participants completed the task alone. In the second iteration, subjects were randomized to one of 28 treatments.
In the baseline treatment, the task was completed alone, whereas in the 27 treatments, participants could see the dynamic movements of “peers” sampled from previous subjects' movements. The 27 treatments differed in the number of peers and whether they followed or violated the rule. In the third iteration, participants completed the task alone. The mean rule conformity was 77.2% in the baseline of the second iteration.
Individuals observing rule-following peers demonstrated a slight increase in rule conformity. Notably, observing just one peer violating the rule resulted in a substantial reduction in rule conformity, and observing all rule-violating peers led to a significant decrease in rule following. When observing both rule-violating and rule-conforming peers, the effects of the rule-breaking peers prevailed, resulting in an overall decrease in rule-conformity. However, even when all six peers violated the rule, 55% of participants still conformed, illustrating that while rule-breaking was contagious, conformity remained remarkably high. Moreover, a 1% increase in observed peer violations led to a 0.12% increase in rule-breaking in the third iteration.
The lowest rule conformity was observed in the third iteration (58%), suggesting that observing peers' behavior can have a lasting effect.
Extrinsic incentives and prosocial motives
In experiment 4, there were consequences for others and extrinsic incentives as motives to follow the rule. Experiment 4 also measured social expectations, eliciting conditional conformity with them. Experiment 4 had four nested treatments. The first treatment involved replicating the baseline traffic light task (BL).
The second treatment (EX) added an externality to BL (i.e., consequences for others), wherein $1 was donated to a charity for rule conformity. Rule violation would cancel this donation. The third (weak punishment, WP) and fourth (strong punishment, SP) treatments involved sanctions to EX. Rule conformity was 55% in the baseline (BL), and increased by 6.8 percentage points in the presence of externalities and by 23 percentage points in the presence of strong incentives.
The study also notes that personality traits such as patience and shame proneness are linked to greater rule following.
Conclusions
In summary, the findings suggest that the primary reason for rule conformity was respect for the rules. Participants expected rule conformity and viewed it as socially appropriate. Although rule violations were contagious, they were moderate. Extrinsic incentives and prosocial motives increased rule conformity, but may not be necessary to induce substantial conformity.
Notably, about 23% of participants demonstrated unconditional rule conformity, independent of social expectations. This finding is important, as intrinsic respect for rules may be required for social order in many situations where incentives are weak or absent and consequences for others are not salient. Overall, the findings may help explain why rules guide much of human behavior.
However, the authors caution that these results are based on stylized experimental tasks and largely on samples from the US and UK, and further research is needed to assess generalizability and individual-level motivations.