Wait or Eat? Self-Other Differences in a Commonly Held Social Norm

Abstract

We examine attitudes towards a prevalent social norm: waiting to eat until everyone in a dining party has received their food. In doing so, we take a novel approach to social norms by documenting self-other differences in prescriptive norm adherence. Six experiments (total N = 1,907) show that people expect greater norm adherence from themselves compared to others: they believe they should follow the norm more than others (Studies 1a, 2a, 3-4). We further show that this self-other difference is driven by a differential perception of the psychological costs and benefits of eating versus waiting, which are more pronounced for the self than for others (Studies 2a-2b). We test two interventions targeting this difference. We show that taking the other person’s perspective attenuates, but does not eliminate, the self-other difference (Study 3). Furthermore, there is no impact on the magnitude of the self-other difference when a dining companion encourages the person waiting to break the norm, thereby removing social constraints (Study 4). Whereas past research has demonstrated self-other differences in norm endorsement, we show self-other differences in the perceived utility of norm adherence.

Keywords: Social norms, Self-other difference, Food consumption, Norm utility, Norm adherence, Perspective-taking