Impact of the correction of social norms on moral judgment
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2025-07-08
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en
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In today’s world, individuals are constantly exposed to both true and false information, including misleading social norms. Past research has explored the influence of social norms on moral judgment. However, less is known about how people respond when those norms are later corrected. This study investigates the extent to which corrections of previously presented (false) descriptive social norms influence individuals’ moral judgments in moral dilemmas. A within-subject experimental survey design was used, in which 94 participants rated four moral dilemmas across three time points: (1) before seeing any social norm, (2) after being shown a descriptive norm, and (3) after a correction to that norm was presented. The four dilemmas had different contexts and characteristics. The social norm values were manipulated to initially represent high (65–84%) agreement, then corrected in the opposite direction to low (15–26%) agreement. The results show that corrected norms had a significant impact on moral judgment. The strength of these effects varied depending on the size of the deviation between participants’ judgment at the initial norm and the correction norm. These findings suggest that moral judgments are influenced by social norms and remain open to change when those norms are corrected.
Keywords: Moral judgment, Moral dilemma, Norm correction, Social norms, Within-Subject Design
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen