Beyond Self-Interested Choices: The Influence Mechanism of Social Norms on Pro-Environmental Behavior in Social Dilemmas

Ren Mengmeng, Fan Wei, Huang Zijun, Yang Lijun, Zhong Yiping

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (2) : 412-425.

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (2) : 412-425. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20260214
Social, Personality & Organizational Psychology

Beyond Self-Interested Choices: The Influence Mechanism of Social Norms on Pro-Environmental Behavior in Social Dilemmas

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Abstract

In complex social contexts, pro-environmental behavior (PEB) often emerges within social dilemmas where long-term environmental interests conflict not only with short-term personal gains but also with the cooperative interests of social groups. These dilemmas highlight a fundamental challenge: individuals may prioritize immediate personal or collective benefits over ecological sustainability. Social norms, as powerful yet often implicit regulatory forces, have been shown to promote PEB significantly. However, it is unclear whether social norms exert the same influence within social dilemmas, where environmental interests directly compete with both self-interest and group cooperation. Investigating this issue is crucial for advancing theoretical understanding and developing practical strategies that foster sustainable behavior.

According to normative focus theory, social norms are classified into descriptive social norms, which communicate “what others are doing,” and injunctive social norms, which indicate “societal approval or disapproval.” Previous research suggests that these two types of norms exert distinct effects on PEB, with descriptive social norms frequently demonstrating greater effectiveness than injunctive social norms in encouraging such actions. However, how these norms operate within social dilemmas, where PEB is influenced by competing individual, group, and collective environmental interests, remains unknown. To address this question, the present study employs the Greater Good Game, a paradigm specifically designed to examine PEB in social dilemmas. By integrating event-related potentials (ERP) techniques, this research further explores the neural mechanisms underlying the influence of different types and intensities of social norms on pro-environmental decision-making in social dilemmas. Through this approach, the study aims to deepen our understanding of how social norms shape PEB in complex social contexts.

The results of this study indicate that individuals exposed to prominent descriptive social norms exhibit an increase in PEB within social dilemmas. This implies that when individuals perceive a robust norm of PEB among their peers, they are more likely to conform and engage in similar actions. These findings highlight the significant role of descriptive social norms in promoting PEB through social influence, demonstrating how perceived group conduct influences individual environmental decisions. At the neural level, ERP analysis offers more profound insights into the distinct effects of injunctive social norms on cognitive processing. The results show that under injunctive social norm conditions, individuals making pro-environmental choices exhibit a more negative N1 amplitude and an enhanced P2 amplitude. The increased negativity of the N1 amplitude indicates that injunctive social norms attract greater attention during the early stages of perceptual processing. Meanwhile, the larger P2 amplitude signifies enhanced cognitive resource allocation during the initial phases of decision evaluation. Furthermore, individuals subjected to high injunctive social norms exhibit a more negative N400 amplitude when making pro-environmental choices, a component typically linked to semantic integration difficulties and cognitive conflict. This pattern implies that injunctive social norms may induce greater cognitive conflict, thereby prompting individuals to engage in more reflective processing as they consider the broader social implications of their actions.

The findings suggest that the high descriptive social norms promote PEB by reinforcing group behavioral consistency, encouraging individuals to align their actions with perceived collective norms. In contrast, injunctive social norms influence decision-making by enhancing attentional engagement and eliciting cognitive conflict, prompting more deliberate processing of environmental choices. These results offer valuable insights into the mechanisms by which social norms influence PEB within social dilemmas, particularly in shaping individuals’ ecological decision-making processes. By uncovering distinct cognitive and neural pathways associated with descriptive and injunctive social norms, this study deepens our understanding of how social influence operates in environmental contexts. Furthermore, these findings provide a theoretical foundation for designing policies that effectively leverage social norms to encourage sustainable behaviors, offering practical implications for environmental policy and intervention strategies aimed at addressing urgent ecological challenges.

Key words

pro-environmental behavior / social norms / greater good game / ERP

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Ren Mengmeng , Fan Wei , Huang Zijun , et al . Beyond Self-Interested Choices: The Influence Mechanism of Social Norms on Pro-Environmental Behavior in Social Dilemmas[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2026, 49(2): 412-425 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20260214

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Despite the availability of multiple safe vaccines, vaccine hesitancy may present a challenge to successful control of the COVID-19 pandemic. As with many human behaviors, people's vaccine acceptance may be affected by their beliefs about whether others will accept a vaccine (i.e., descriptive norms). However, information about these descriptive norms may have different effects depending on the actual descriptive norm, people's baseline beliefs, and the relative importance of conformity, social learning, and free-riding. Here, using a pre-registered, randomized experiment (N = 484,239) embedded in an international survey (23 countries), we show that accurate information about descriptive norms can increase intentions to accept a vaccine for COVID-19. We find mixed evidence that information on descriptive norms impacts mask wearing intentions and no statistically significant evidence that it impacts intentions to physically distance. The effects on vaccination intentions are largely consistent across the 23 included countries, but are concentrated among people who were otherwise uncertain about accepting a vaccine. Providing normative information in vaccine communications partially corrects individuals' underestimation of how many other people will accept a vaccine. These results suggest that presenting people with information about the widespread and growing acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines helps to increase vaccination intentions.© 2023. The Author(s).
[50]
Mollen S., Cheung Q., & Stok F. M. (2023). The influence of social norms on anticipated snacking: An experimental study comparing different types of social norms. Appetite, 180, 106372.
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Mortensen C. R., Neel R., Cialdini R. B., Jaeger C. M., Jacobson R. P., & Ringel M. M. (2019). Trending norms: A lever for encouraging behaviors performed by the minority. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(2), 201-210.
If many people currently engage in a behavior, others are likely to follow suit. The current article extends research on these descriptive norms to examine the unique effect of trending norms: norms in which the number of people engaging in a behavior is increasing-and even if this is only among a minority of people: trending minority norms. The current research shows people conform more to these trending minority norms than a minority norm alone, or a no norm control condition-even though the norms addressed behaviors that differed from the target behavior. This demonstrates a distinct effect of trends and a strategy for leveraging normative information to increase conformity to behaviors not yet performed by a majority. Findings support that this increased conformity emerges because people predict the increase in prevalence will continue. An internal meta-analysis examining all data we collected on this topic supports these conclusions.
[52]
Moshagen M. (2010). multiTree: A computer program for the analysis of multinomial processing tree models. Behavior Research Methods, 42(1), 42-54.
Multinomial processing tree (MPT) models are a family of stochastic models for psychology and related sciences that can be used to model observed categorical frequencies as a function of a sequence of latent states. For the analysis of such models, the present article presents a platform-independent computer program called multiTree, which simplifies the creation and the analysis of MPT models. This makes them more convenient to implement and analyze. Also, multiTree offers advanced modeling features. It provides estimates of the parameters and their variability, goodness-of-fit statistics, hypothesis testing, checks for identifiability, parametric and nonparametric bootstrapping, and power analyses. In this article, the algorithms underlying multiTree are given, and a user guide is provided. The multiTree program can be downloaded from http://psycho3.uni-mannheim.de/multitree.
[53]
Mundt D., Batzke M. C., Bläsing T. M., Gomera Deaño S., & Helfers A. (2024). Effectiveness and context dependency of social norm interventions: Five field experiments on nudging pro-environmental and pro-social behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1392296.
Social norm interventions hold the potential to change people’s behavior. Five field experiments (N = 1,163) examined the effects of a simple and easily realizable social norm nudge based on the social media format “Be like Bill.” The nudge consisted of a stick figure named Toni that communicated descriptive and injunctive norms regarding pro-environmental or pro-social behaviors. Nudge conditions were compared to no-intervention control conditions. Experiment 1 (N = 179) focused on paper towel consumption in a women’s restroom at a German university. The nudge condition used less paper towels than the control condition, d = 0.48. Experiment 2 (N = 183) replicated this result (d = 0.32) in a more diverse setting of a women’s restroom at a German Christmas market. Experiment 3 (N = 250) examined differences in the effects of prescriptive (i.e., ‘do-norm’) versus proscriptive (i.e., ‘do not-norm’) social norms on paper towel consumption again in a university women’s restroom. The effectiveness of both social norm nudge conditions was shown in comparison to the control condition (d = 0.46; d = 0.40), while the prescriptive and proscriptive social norm manipulations did not differ. Experiment 4 (N = 206) applied the nudging approach to the use of plastic lids in a coffee shop, where no effect was found. Finally, Experiment 5 (N = 345) focused on the pro-social behavior of mask wearing in a bakery toward the end of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions in Germany. In the nudge condition, more visitors put on face masks compared to the control group, d = 0.39. Limitations and contextual factors regarding the applicability of our social norm nudge are discussed.
[54]
Oh R. R. Y., Fielding K. S., Nghiem, L. T. P., Chang C. C., Carrasco L. R., & Fuller R. A. (2021). Connection to nature is predicted by family values, social norms and personal experiences of nature. Global Ecology and Conservation, 28, e01632.
[55]
Packard C. D., & Schultz P. W. (2023). Emotions as the enforcers of norms. Emotion Review, 15(4), 279-283.
Personal and social norms are well-established predictors of proenvironmental behavior, and past research often discusses the motivational properties of different norms. However, less research has examined how individuals feel after conforming to, or deviating from, a norm. We suggest that emotions may function as norm enforcement tools that reward conformity and punish deviance. As a starting point, we outline the emotions that individuals may experience when conforming to, or deviating from, different norms (i.e., personal norms, descriptive social norms, injunctive social norms), and how these emotions can influence proenvironmental behavior. More research is needed to clarify how emotions facilitate, and possibly mediate, the influence of norms on proenvironmental behavior.
[56]
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Accelerating the construction of the green supply chain system and improving the efficiency of the green supply chain is the key to promoting the high-quality development of enterprises. In view of this, based on stakeholder theory, higher order theory and expectancy theory, this study focuses on the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on corporate green supply chain efficiency (GSCE) and the moderating role of chief executive officer (CEO) narcissism. A regression analysis of the observed sample reveals that CSR significantly enhances GSCE. Further decomposing CSR into internal CSR and external CSR to reveal the impact of different types of CSR on GSCE, we find that internal CSR fulfillment has a significant positive impact on GSCE, and this relationship is strengthened when CEOs are narcissistic. Furthermore, external CSR has a significant negative impact on GSCE, and this relationship is also strengthened by CEO narcissism. The main contribution of this paper is to study the relationship between CSR and green supply chain efficiency, decompose CSR into internal and external CSR, enrich the research on the intrinsic mechanism of value creation of CSR. It also enriches the research in the context of CSR from the perspective of CEO personality traits, providing new ideas and suggestions for manager selection and corporate greening governance in practice.
[57]
Plöchl M., Ossandón J. P., & König P. (2012). Combining EEG and eye tracking: Identification, characterization, and correction of eye movement artifacts in electroencephalographic data. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 278.
Eye movements introduce large artifacts to electroencephalographic recordings (EEG) and thus render data analysis difficult or even impossible. Trials contaminated by eye movement and blink artifacts have to be discarded, hence in standard EEG-paradigms subjects are required to fixate on the screen. To overcome this restriction, several correction methods including regression and blind source separation have been proposed. Yet, there is no automated standard procedure established. By simultaneously recording eye movements and 64-channel-EEG during a guided eye movement paradigm, we investigate and review the properties of eye movement artifacts, including corneo-retinal dipole changes, saccadic spike potentials and eyelid artifacts, and study their interrelations during different types of eye and eyelid movements. In concordance with earlier studies our results confirm that these artifacts arise from different independent sources and that depending on electrode site, gaze direction, and choice of reference these sources contribute differently to the measured signal. We assess the respective implications for artifact correction methods and therefore compare the performance of two prominent approaches, namely linear regression and independent component analysis (ICA). We show and discuss that due to the independence of eye artifact sources, regression-based correction methods inevitably over- or under-correct individual artifact components, while ICA is in principle suited to address such mixtures of different types of artifacts. Finally, we propose an algorithm, which uses eye tracker information to objectively identify eye-artifact related ICA-components (ICs) in an automated manner. In the data presented here, the algorithm performed very similar to human experts when those were given both, the topographies of the ICs and their respective activations in a large amount of trials. Moreover it performed more reliable and almost twice as effective than human experts when those had to base their decision on IC topographies only. Furthermore, a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis demonstrated an optimal balance of false positive and false negative at an area under curve (AUC) of more than 0.99. Removing the automatically detected ICs from the data resulted in removal or substantial suppression of ocular artifacts including microsaccadic spike potentials, while the relevant neural signal remained unaffected. In conclusion the present work aims at a better understanding of individual eye movement artifacts, their interrelations and the respective implications for eye artifact correction. Additionally, the proposed ICA-procedure provides a tool for optimized detection and correction of eye movement related artifact components.
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Raihani N. J., & McAuliffe K. (2014). Dictator game giving: The importance of descriptive versus injunctive norms. PLoS ONE, 9(12), e113826.
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Ren M., Zhong B., & Fan W. (2024). The impact of descriptive and injunctive social norms on pro-environmental behavior: A study using eye-tracking technology. Current Psychology, 43(45), 34761-34777.
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Schneider C. R., & van der Linden S. (2023). Social norms as a powerful lever for motivating pro-climate actions. One Earth, 6(4), 346-351.
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Schorn A., & Wirth W. (2024). They approve but they don' t act: Promoting sustainable minority behavior with (conflicting) social norm appeals. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1337585.
Social norm appeals are effective in promoting sustainable majority behavior but could backfire when the target behavior is only performed by a minority of people. However, emphasizing that an increasing number of people have started engaging in the behavior or that the majority approve the behavior might prevent such negative effects. However, only a few studies have investigated the combination of descriptive minority and injunctive majority social norm appeals, with inconsistent results. Some studies of minority behavior suggest that the characteristics of recipients might determine the inconsistent results regarding the impact of minority social norm appeals and that social norm appeals could have a greater impact on individuals with weaker environment related dispositions.
[62]
Schultz P. W. (2001). The structure of environmental concern: Concern for self, other people, and the biosphere. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21(4), 327-339.
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Schultz W. P., Nolan J. M., Cialdini R. B., Goldstein N. J., & Griskevicius V. (2007). The constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological Science, 18(5), 429-434.
Despite a long tradition of effectiveness in laboratory tests, normative messages have had mixed success in changing behavior in field contexts, with some studies showing boomerang effects. To test a theoretical account of this inconsistency, we conducted a field experiment in which normative messages were used to promote household energy conservation. As predicted, a descriptive normative message detailing average neighborhood usage produced either desirable energy savings or the undesirable boomerang effect, depending on whether households were already consuming at a low or high rate. Also as predicted, adding an injunctive message (conveying social approval or disapproval) eliminated the boomerang effect. The results offer an explanation for the mixed success of persuasive appeals based on social norms and suggest how such appeals should be properly crafted.
[64]
Smith J. R., Louis W. R., Terry D. J., Greenaway K. H., Clarke M. R., & Cheng X. (2012). Congruent or conflicted? The impact of injunctive and descriptive norms on environmental intentions. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32(4), 353-361.
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van Kleef G. A., Gelfand M. J., & Jetten J. (2019). The dynamic nature of social norms: New perspectives on norm development, impact, violation, and enforcement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 84, 103814.
[67]
Vesely S., & Klöckner C. A. (2018). How anonymity and norms influence costly support for environmental causes. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 58, 27-30.
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Vesely S., Klöckner C. A., & Brick C. (2020). Pro-environmental behavior as a signal of cooperativeness: Evidence from a social dilemma experiment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 67, 101362.
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Wang X., Kong F., Zhu H., & Chen Y. (2024). Dynamic indirect reciprocity: The influence of personal reputation and group reputation on cooperative behavior in nested social dilemmas. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 112, 104599.
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Wichary S., Magnuski M., Oleksy T., & Brzezicka A. (2017). Neural signatures of rational and heuristic choice strategies: A single trial ERP analysis. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11, 401.
In multi-attribute choice, people use heuristics to simplify decision problems. We studied the use of heuristic and rational strategies and their electrophysiological correlates. Since previous work linked the P3 ERP component to attention and decision making, we were interested whether the amplitude of this component is associated with decision strategy use. To this end, we recorded EEG when participants performed a two-alternative choice task, where they could acquire decision cues in a sequential manner and use them to make choices. We classified participants' choices as consistent with a rational Weighted Additive rule (WADD) or a simple heuristic Take The Best (TTB). Participants differed in their preference for WADD and TTB. Using a permutation-based single trial approach, we analyzed EEG responses to consecutive decision cues and their relation to the individual strategy preference. The preference for WADD over TTB was associated with overall higher signal amplitudes to decision cues in the P3 time window. Moreover, the preference for WADD was associated with similar P3 amplitudes to consecutive cues, whereas the preference for TTB was associated with substantial decreases in P3 amplitudes to consecutive cues. We also found that the preference for TTB was associated with enhanced N1 component to cues that discriminated decision alternatives, suggesting very early attention allocation to such cues by TTB users. Our results suggest that preference for either WADD or TTB has an early neural signature reflecting differences in attentional weighting of decision cues. In light of recent findings and hypotheses regarding P3, we interpret these results as indicating the involvement of catecholamine arousal systems in shaping predecisional information processing and strategy selection.
[71]
Wit A. P., & Kerr N. L. (2002). “Me versus just us versus us all” categorization and cooperation in nested social dilemmas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(3), 616-637.
[72]
Yang J., Guan L., Dedovic K., Qi M., & Zhang Q. (2012). The neural correlates of implicit self-relevant processing in low self-esteem: An ERP study. Brain Research, 1471, 75-80.
Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that implicit and explicit processing of self-relevant (schematic) material elicit activity in many of the same brain regions. Electrophysiological studies on the neural processing of explicit self-relevant cues have generally supported the view that P300 is an index of attention to self-relevant stimuli; however, there has been no study to date investigating the temporal course of implicit self-relevant processing. The current study seeks to investigate the time course involved in implicit self-processing by comparing processing of self-relevant with non-self-relevant words while subjects are making a judgment about color of the words in an implicit attention task. Sixteen low self-esteem participants were examined using event-related potentials technology (ERP). We hypothesized that this implicit attention task would involve P2 component rather than the P300 component. Indeed, P2 component has been associated with perceptual analysis and attentional allocation and may be more likely to occur in unconscious conditions such as this task. Results showed that latency of P2 component, which indexes the time required for perceptual analysis, was more prolonged in processing self-relevant words compared to processing non-self-relevant words. Our results suggested that the judgment of the color of the word interfered with automatic processing of self-relevant information and resulted in less efficient processing of self-relevant word. Together with previous ERP studies examining processing of explicit self-relevant cues, these findings suggest that the explicit and the implicit processing of self-relevant information would not elicit the same ERP components.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
[73]
Zubair M., Iqbal S., Usman S. M., Awais M., Wang R., & Wang X. (2020). Message framing and self-conscious emotions help to understand pro-environment consumer purchase intention: An ERP study. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 18304.
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