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Group identities can undermine social tipping after intervention
Sönke Ehret1, Sara M Constantino2,3,4, Elke U Weber5,6,7
1Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. sonkeklaus.ehret@unil.ch.
Social tipping accelerates behavior change, but group identity can disrupt it. Linking choices to partisan identity prevented rapid norm shifts, highlighting tipping
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Behavioral Economics
- Political Science
Background:
- Social tipping points can rapidly shift collective behavior towards policy goals.
- Group identities may interfere with social tipping mechanisms in unpredictable ways.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how group identity influences social tipping dynamics.
- To examine the impact of linking behavior choices to partisan identity on norm transitions.
Main Methods:
- An experiment was conducted during the 2020 US federal elections.
- Participants faced incentives to coordinate choices and establish norms.
- An intervention introduced pressure to tip to a new norm, with control (neutral labels) and identity (partisan images) treatments.
Main Results:
- Control groups showed slow norm development followed by rapid tipping after intervention.
- Identity groups developed norms quickly pre-intervention but experienced costly disagreement post-intervention.
- Linking choices to partisan identity, even trivially, destroyed the tipping phenomenon.
Conclusions:
- Social tipping is a powerful mechanism for cultural change when behavior and identity are unlinked.
- Partisan group identity acts as a significant barrier to social tipping, leading to persistent disagreement.
- Policymakers must consider the role of identity in designing interventions aimed at accelerating behavior change.
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