Being Observed Does Not Boost Rule Retrieval

Abstract

Previous research, mainly focusing on the situational preconditions of rule violations, indicates that feelings of being watched by other agents promote rule compliance. However, the cognitive underpinnings of this effect and of rule violations in general have only attracted little scientific attention yet. In this study, we investigated whether cues of being observed not only reduce the likelihood of violating rules but also affect the underlying cognitive processes of such behavior when still putting a rule violation into action. Therefore, we applied a motion-tracking paradigm in which participants could violate a simple stimulus-response mapping rule while being faced with pictures of either open or closed eyes. In line with prior research, temporal and spatial measures of the participants’ movements indicated that violating this rule induced substantial cognitive conflict. However, conflict during rule-breaking was not moderated by the eye stimuli. This outcome suggests that rule retrieval constitutes an automatic process which is not or is only barely influenced by situational parameters. Moreover, our results imply that the effect of perceived observation on rule conformity is driven by normative influences on decision-making instead of social facilitation of dominant action tendencies. ate retrieval of rule-abiding action tendencies. This effect holds true in abstract setups that neither impose motivational temptations for rule-breaking nor punish this kind of behavior, but it occurs similarly when rule violations are rewarded financially (Pfister et al., 2019). However, it is an open question whether the available evidence for rule retrieval indicates full or partial retrieval of rule-abiding action tendencies. In the experiment presented here, we examined whether cues of being watched affect the cognitive underpinnings of rule-breaking actions by fostering retrieval of rule-abiding action tendencies. We applied a state-of-the-art motion-tracking paradigm (Pfister, Wirth, Schwarz, Steinhauser et al., 2016; Wirth et al., 2016) in which participants indicated before each trial whether they will follow or break an arbitrary stimulus-response mapping rule. At the same time, we either presented cues of observation (open eyes as used in Bateson et al., 2006) or control images (closed eyes). We expected cognitive conflict for rule violations as quantified in four temporal and spatial measures derived from trajectory analysis. Importantly, if cues of being watched were to moderate immediate retrieval of rule-abiding behavior, this conflict should be magnified for open as compared to closed eye cues. Contrary to this speculation, we did not find evidence for such a moderating effect, suggesting that previous reports are mainly due to normative social influence rather than (social) facilitation.