Repetition Legitimizes:Consistent Behavior as a Signal of Reliability, Trustworthiness, and Competence

Appearing consistent across time is a strong motive guiding individual behavior, but why do consistent appearances matter so much to people? Across three studies, we show that people strategically behave more consistently in public to signal their reliability, trustworthiness, and competence. These signals lead to positive social outcomes like increased cooperation and power to persuade others

Repetition Legitimizes:Consistent Behavior as a Signal of Reliability, Trustworthiness, and Competence

Appearing consistent across time is a strong motive guiding individual behavior, but why do consistent appearances matter so much to people? Across three studies, we show that people strategically behave more consistently in public to signal their reliability, trustworthiness, and competence. These signals lead to positive social outcomes like increased cooperation and power to persuade others

Releasing the brake:How disinhibition frees people and facilitates social change

Following recent online movements (e.g. #BlackLivesMatter), online platforms became widely regarded as catalysts of social change since they allow social agents to mobilize vast audiences. However, we argue that their role as catalysts spans further. Disinhibition provoked by increased anonymity online liberates individuals from their own behavioural constraints (i.e. need for consistency) and from others’ perceptions (i.e. need to be perceived favourably), enabling a freer expression of dissent at the individual level, which can accelerate change at the societal level.We tested our hypothesis with an experimental paradigm and accompanying agent-based simulations. The paradigm was a multi-round group game with a between-group anonymity manipulation. Participants were tasked with reaching a consensus and incentivised for change-stimulating and change-inhibiting behaviours (i.e. coordination, consistency, conformity), while confederates acted as minorities overthrowing the status quo. The agent-based model contained an agent-level social payoff function with components resembling paradigm-induced motivations, wherein anonymity was manipulated by varying their relative weights.Our experimental study (n=56 participants, 6 groups) reveals that individuals change their stances faster in anonymous settings. Applying this insight at a larger scale, the agent-based simulations demonstrate that anonymity allows societies to adopt innovations quicker, reach tipping points more easily, and can thus facilitate social change

Releasing the brake:How disinhibition frees people and facilitates innovation diffusion

In this paper, we focus on a new aspect of the diffusion process that can help explain the virality of online new product campaigns. We propose that the sense of anonymity associated with being online liberates people from impression management concerns. This facilitates individuals to express themselves more freely at the individual level, in turn having a major accelerating on diffusion at the group level. We tested our hypothesis with a novel experimental paradigm as well as via an agent-based model (ABM). Participants in the experiment were tasked with coordinating on a product selection and confederates acted as a minority trying to spread the innovative product. The ABM mirrored the experimental game using an agent-level social payoff function. Across both empirical settings, we found that individuals are more likely to explore novelties in anonymous settings, which allows societies to reach the tipping points that are required for innovations to diffuse more easily