The Effect of Social Norms Estimation on Non-Strategic Giving : Controlling for the Role of Numeric Anchoring and Extra Monetary Prospects

Making participants estimate the prescriptive norm increases generosity in a Dictator Game (DG). Authors have interpreted this result in terms of Norm Focus Theory (Cialdini et al., 1990). Nonetheless, non-normative explanations have not been discarded yet. We replicated the effect of prescriptive norms on DG decisions and assessed whether a normative or alternative explanations were responsible for the phenomenon First, we controlled for the incentive present in the normative estimation exercise by having conditions with (SN) and without (SN_WO) monetary incentives for accurate guesses. These conditions were contrasted against a baseline control without any estimation before the DG decision. Second, we tested for a potential numeric anchoring effect of the estimation exercise by having a condition (SN_100) in which the estimation exercise was predicted, by the anchoring hypothesis, to lead to more selfish choices than the baseline. Results showed higher generosity than the baseline in all conditions. This replicates the original findings even in the condition in which the normative exercise was non-incentivized and in the condition in which anchoring predicted greedier decisions. We conclude that the Norm Focus interpretation was supported with added rigor, and we discuss the generalizability and practical relevance of these findings