Selected projects
Mental well-being and adaptation decisions of Mexican farmers following extreme weather events (Research design)
with Ann-Kathrin Koessler
How Negative Affect Influences Mal-Adaptation Decisions? (Pilot)
with Tobias Vorlaufer and Ann-Kathrin Koessler
Cultural Framing Meets the Precautionary Principle: Testing Mexican Views on GM Maize (Pilot)
single authored project
Causing harm with others. The effect of diffusion of responsibility and descriptive social norms (Revise and resubmit)
with Pablo Soto-Mota
Abstract
Why do individuals in groups tend to cause more harm than isolated individuals? This paper explores the mechanisms of diffusion of responsibility and social norms. Using an online experiment with 1,801 participants, we ask two questions: Are individuals in larger groups of culprits more willing to collaborate in generating harm? Do descriptive social norms affect the willingness to collaborate in generating harm? In the experiment, participants were pivotal in a group decision whether to eliminate a charity donation. They could benefit privately from favouring the elimination, though their individual decision was crucial for the group. We compared groups with different numbers of culprits and different strengths of the descriptive social norm. Congruent with the idea of diffusion of responsibility, we found that a larger proportion of participants were willing to cause harm in groups with more culprits. Likewise, as predicted by descriptive social norms, we found that participants were more likely to eliminate the donation when they knew that a larger proportion of individuals in their group had favoured eliminating it.