Individuals Adapt Their Inappropriateness Evaluation of Norm Violations Through Observation of Their Social Environment

The extent to which violating social norms is seen as inappropriate varies between social groups. Furthermore, knowledge about how inappropriate it is to violate these social norms is unlikely to be pre-specified. Rather, individuals likely infer information about social norms from their social environments. In an experiment with American participants (N = 834), we find that observing how others evaluate the inappropriateness of a set of social norm violations leads participants to adapt their own inappropriateness evaluations to a different set of social norm violations. This suggests that inferences about the underlying local level of inappropriateness is a feature of norm learning. Our results also suggest that this process may be attuned to the type of norms being processed (General vs. COVID-19 related norms). Overall, this study shows that inference gained through observing others can be generalized and contributes to the ability to adapt and calibrate one’s evaluation of social norm violations to their local environment.