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Group identities can undermine social tipping after intervention

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6, pages 1669–1679 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Social tipping can accelerate behaviour change consistent with policy objectives in diverse domains from social justice to climate change. Hypothetically, however, group identities might undermine tipping in ways that policymakers do not anticipate. To examine this, we implemented an experiment around the 2020 US federal elections. The participants faced consistent incentives to coordinate their choices. Once the participants had established a coordination norm, an intervention created pressure to tip to a new norm. Our control treatment used neutral labels for choices. Our identity treatment used partisan political images. This simple pay-off-irrelevant relabelling generated extreme differences. The control groups developed norms slowly before intervention but transitioned to new norms rapidly after intervention. The identity groups developed norms rapidly before intervention but persisted in a state of costly disagreement after intervention. Tipping was powerful but unreliable. It supported striking cultural changes when choice and identity were unlinked, but even a trivial link destroyed tipping entirely.

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Fig. 1: The two images used to label the buttons in the identity treatment.
Fig. 2: Distributions of normalized spillovers by treatment.
Fig. 3: Choice dynamics by treatment.
Fig. 4: Choice of alternative behaviour by treatment.
Fig. 5: Pay-off dynamics.

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Data availability

The data are publicly available at the Open Science Framework, at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KN3A2.

Code availability

The code for the analyses is publicly available at the Open Science Framework, at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KN3A2. To collect the interactive group data, we used the open-source otree software, version 3.3, accessible at otree.org. We used Qualtrics (October 2020 version) to collect the questionnaire data.

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Acknowledgements

For helpful comments, we thank J. Barceló, S. Lonati, H. Nax, N. Nikiforakis, C. Zehnder and seminar participants at the Collegio Carlo Alberto, the University of Lausanne, NYUAD, Oxford University, Princeton University and the University of Zurich. We thank Clara Sfeir for research assistance. The study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 100018 185417/1 to C.E. and S.V.). E.U.W. and S.M.C. thank the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton for funding. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Sönke Ehret, Sara M. Constantino.

  2. These authors jointly supervised this work: Charles Efferson, Sonja Vogt.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Sönke Ehret, Charles Efferson & Sonja Vogt

  2. School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Sara M. Constantino & Elke U. Weber

  3. School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Sara M. Constantino

  4. Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Sara M. Constantino

  5. Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Elke U. Weber

  6. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Elke U. Weber

  7. Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Sonja Vogt

  8. Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Sonja Vogt

Authors
  1. Sönke Ehret
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  2. Sara M. Constantino
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  3. Elke U. Weber
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  4. Charles Efferson
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Contributions

All authors designed the study. S.E. programmed the main experiment. S.E. and S.V. worked with a freelance artist to develop the images of Biden and Trump. S.E. and S.M.C. pre-tested the images, ran the initial surveys to identify partisan commitments and ran the experimental sessions. S.E., S.M.C. and C.E. analysed the data. All authors interpreted the results. S.E., S.M.C. and C.E. wrote the paper with input from E.U.W. and S.V., S.E., S.M.C. and S.V. wrote the Supplementary Information with input from E.U.W. and C.E.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sönke Ehret, Sara M. Constantino, Charles Efferson or Sonja Vogt.

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Ehret, S., Constantino, S.M., Weber, E.U. et al. Group identities can undermine social tipping after intervention. Nat Hum Behav 6, 1669–1679 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01440-5

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