Rule-breakers influence others more strongly than exemplary people
A University of Amsterdam study shows that serious violations prompt imitation and sometimes further escalation.
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People are quicker to adopt rule-breaking behaviour when they see others blatantly violating the rules. That is the finding of an online experiment by researchers from the University of Amsterdam, published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The study involved 750 people in the United States. According to the researchers, the participants were roughly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats and were given a task with one hundred squares on a screen. They had to choose the square that lit up most brightly, but could earn more money by deliberately choosing one further away from the correct square.
After their first choice, participants saw how an earlier participant had acted. They were shown whether that person had followed the rule, committed a minor violation or clearly broken the rule. They were then allowed to adjust their own choice. This process was repeated six times.
Almost a quarter of the initial choices, 23 per cent, involved the square offering the highest reward and therefore the greatest deviation from the rule. Seeing a serious violation subsequently increased the likelihood that participants would deviate further from the rule themselves. The effect was stronger when the example-setter had the same political preference.
Minor violations were also regularly imitated. In about 4 per cent of cases, participants went further than the example they had seen. At the same time, according to the researchers, about one-third of participants continued to follow the rule, even when doing so yielded less money.
The researchers also used computer simulations to explore what a minority of such ‘escalating’ participants could do within a group. They showed that limited rule-breaking behaviour can, in some scenarios, quickly spread more widely. The simulations are not a measurement of behaviour in society, but an elaboration of the patterns found in the experiment.
The study does not say that good behaviour has no influence at all. According to the researchers, its effect in this experiment was much smaller than that of serious violations. An external expert consulted by The Guardian pointed out that the task was abstract and that participants faced no real penalty. It has therefore not yet been established how strongly the pattern carries over to, for example, traffic rules, behaviour at work or online behaviour.
The researchers also stress that breaking conventions can sometimes be useful for creativity and learning. The finding therefore concerns mainly the way visible behaviour can shift social norms, rather than a general rule that every bad example is automatically followed.
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The key findings, figures and publication status can be found in the study and in independent reporting. The experiment’s limitations were also explicitly checked and included.
- confirmed The study involved 750 participants in the United States. — Mentioned by Phys.org and The Guardian. source
- confirmed The study was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. — Stated in the study details and by both reporting sources. source
- confirmed Twenty-three per cent of the initial choices involved the highest reward. — Result described by Phys.org and The Guardian. source
- confirmed Serious violations increased participants’ own rule-breaking, especially when they shared the same political preference. — Description of the results in The Guardian and Phys.org. source
- confirmed In about 4 per cent of cases, participants went further than the example. — Mentioned in Phys.org’s research-journalism summary. source
- confirmed The abstract task involved no real penalty for breaking the rule. — Limitation mentioned by external expert Stephen Reicher in The Guardian. source
Editor's note
It is certain that the study was conducted with 750 participants and published following peer review. It remains uncertain how well the abstract online experiment and the simulations predict behaviour outside the laboratory.Sources
- When a few people break the rules, bad behavior spreads quickly — Phys.org
- Bad apple effect: study shows how people are influenced by rule-breaking of others — The Guardian
- Contagion and escalation of rule violations — Proceedings of the Royal Society B
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