DATA for: Group Identity and Peer Effects in Rule-Following

DATA and Analysis Code for Bicchieri, Gächter, Molleman and Nosenzo: Social Identity and Peer Effects in Rule-Following.

Abstract: Social life is governed by a myriad of rules but the behavioral logic of why people
follow rules is only incompletely understood. Here, we investigate how rule follow-
ing is influenced by other people and social proximity to them. In particular, we
are interested in the identity composition of an individual’s observed peer group:
does it matter whether a rule breaker is an ingroup or an outgroup member? To
investigate this question, we use a novel abstract rule-following task with strong
incentives to break the rule. We call our rule-following task the “Y task” because
the rule requested participants (n=7,033 Prolific workers) to take one of the two
diverging paths of a Y-shaped maze. Consistent with previous research, we show
that examples of rule violations trigger further rule violations, even though overall
rule compliance remains high. Contrary to our hypotheses, and research on honesty
and cooperation, we do not find that group identity moderates the influence of peer
compliance on people’s willingness to follow rules. We conclude that rule breaking
is contagious regardless of the ingroup or outgroup status of the rule breaker.