Social norm compliance as a signaling system. II. Studies of fitness-related attributions consequent on a group norm violation

Abstract

People everywhere attend to cues that convey information about social norms and try to comply with norms they believe are in force. In another article, we hypothesized that norm compliance serves a signaling function, and we reported that violations of everyday minor social norms cause observers to make invidious attributions that might decrease violators' fitness, if observers and violators were socially interacting (Wenegrat et al. 1996). A manipulation that increased the salience of such norms increased the adverse effects of norm violations. Many social norms are associated with groups and hence become more salient in situations that call attention to group membership. We performed experiments in which subjects watched videotapes of models violating such a norm in a setting that called attention to group membership. Subjects then rated those models on dimensions that would be relevant to the model's fitness, if subjects and models were socially interacting, and they also expressed their preferences regarding possible future interactions with the models. Violations of the group norm significantly altered fitness-relevant ratings and also preferences concerning future interactions. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that compliance with various social norms serves an important signaling function.