We use a public good experiment to study how in-group cooperation is affected by payoff-irrelevant information about in other groups (i.e., descriptive out-group feedback). find that positive feedback, indicating above-average cooperation, deters low contributors from increasing their contribution towards the average. By contrast, negative which informs participants below-average high decreasin...

The purpose of this study is to advance theorizing about how small groups understand health issues through the use of social network analysis. To achieve this goal, an adapted cognitive social structure examines group social norms around a specific health issue, H1N1 flu prevention. As predicted, individual's attitudes, self-efficacy, and perceived social norms were each positively associated w...

Drawing from social categorization theory, we found that greater demographic heterogeneity led to group norms emphasizing lower cooperation among student teams and officers from ten business units of a financial services firm. This effect faded over time. Perceptions of team norms among those more demographically different from their work group changed more, becoming more cooperative, as a func...

Although past research has demonstrated a positive relationship between collective identification and normative conformity, there may be circumstances in which strongly identified members do not conform but instead choose to challenge group norms. This article proposes a normative conflict model, which distinguishes between nonconformity due to dissent (challenging norms to change them) and non...

This study investigated the relationship between group norms and interpersonal attraction in group work setting. It may be assumed that interpersonal attraction, like group functions, has two conflictive orientations: instrumentality and emotionality. Relationship of the two orientations in interpersonal attraction to group norms was examined in two experiments. Results of Experiment 1, with 66...

Previous research indicates that men typically tolerate more pain in experimental settings than women. One likely explanation for these group differences in pain tolerance is conformity to traditional, gender group social norms (i.e., the ideal man is masculine and tolerates more pain; the ideal woman is feminine and tolerates less pain). According to self-categorization theory, norms guide beh...

Social exclusion of those who challenge group norms was investigated by asking children and adolescents, adolescents, age 9–13 years (N = 381), to evaluate exclusion of group members who deviated from group norms. Testing predictions from social reasoning developmental theories of group-based exclusion, children and adolescents evaluated exclusion based on group norms involving allocation of re...