Norm vigilance in reaction to control threat: A file drawer report
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2021.2914Keywords:
social identity, control motivation, threat, norm conformity, vigilance, group processesAbstract
In times of threat people often turn to social groups to fulfill various needs. In situations where this threat is related to people’s personal sense of control, the model of group-based control provides a social-identity-based account of why thinking and acting in terms of group membership should become more likely to occur. We set out to extend this perspective to the perception and processing of information about norms. Our initial hypothesis, the norm vigilance hypothesis, was that threat to people’s personal sense of control should induce a state where people become more vigilant for information about relevant social norms. This should become evident in more accurate recall of specifically this type of information under conditions of threat. In a series of four studies, we investigated this hypothesis with different paradigms, but were unable to find convincing evidence for the notion of norm vigilance in terms of enhanced accuracy. In a fifth study, we investigated an alternative hypothesis of motivated intergroup distortion of information about social norms after threat, but did not find convincing evidence for this mechanism either.
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