The Effects Of Descriptive Social Norms On Risk Decision Making In Different Task Situations

Descriptive social norms refer to the typical practice of most people in a specific situation,and individuals will be unconsciously influenced by the behavior of most people.The importance of risk decision-making in life is beyond doubt.In order to explore the effects of descriptive social norms on risk decision making,we chose two different task situations,individual decision making task and interactive decision making task,and manipulated the strength of descriptive social norms and injunctive social norms which means most people agree or oppose what kind of behavior.Two studies including three experiments were conducted with college students as subjects.In Experiment 1,the Balloon Analogous Experiment was selected to explore the effects of the descriptive norms on risk decision in individual task situation.In Experiment 2,the interactive decision making task was selected to verify the conclusion of Experiment 1,which proved that the effects of descriptive social norms on risk decision was stable based on the result of Experiment 1.In Experiment 3,in the interactive decision making task,injunctive social norms were introduced to explore whether injunctive norms would moderate the relationship between descriptive norms and risk decision making.The results indicate that:(1)Descriptive social norms had statistically effect on risk decision making.The existence of high descriptive social norms made the subjects more risky,while the participants were more risk averse when low descriptive social norms were conveyed to them.(2)Descriptive social norms had significant influence on the risk decision making through the mediate effect of risk perception.The subjects of the high descriptive norm group had lower risk perception,and hence more risk preference,while the low descriptive norm group had reverse behaviors which showed higher risk perception and more risk aversion.(3)In Balloon Analogous Experiment,the interaction of descriptive social norms and the feedback learning effect(the impact of the previous decision results on the current decision)was significant.The subjects of the high descriptive norm group had more obvious feedback learning effect compared to the low descriptive norm group and the non-standard group.(4)The injunctive social norms moderated the relationship between descriptive social norms and risk decision making.In detail,when descriptive social norms were low,the level of risk preference of the subjects was low,regardless of the injunctive social norms;when the descriptive social norms were high,the subjects of the high injunctive norms group were more risky than the low injunctive norms group.