Social norms as anchor points for trust

Abstract

We investigate whether a social norm communication can be used to nudge decision makers towards increased trust. An experiment was conducted using a modified trust game, where subjects played two rounds of the game. Prior to the second round, a social norm of sending behaviour was communicated to participants. The impact of the social norm communication on trusting behaviour varied with initial transfers: for those who initially transferred amounts below this point, transfers (indicative of trust) increased. However, this impact was almost entirely offset by decreased transfers among those who had initially transferred amounts above this point, suggesting that the social norm communication acted as an anchor point towards which subsequent transfers were drawn. The result in our study was that mean trusting behaviour did not change significantly with the social norm communication. The net impact of an anchor point would be expected to vary with the distribution of behaviour prior to the social norm communication, risking a negative net impact in some cases. Our findings therefore suggest a need for caution in using broadly targeted social norm communications.