Faking It Is Hard to Do: Entrepreneurial Norm Enforcement and Suspicions of Deviance
Name
SocSci_v4_580to610.pdf
Size
682.97 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3e057f65f997ce21296387b0da1c75f0
Author(s)
Kim, Minjae
Zuckerman Sivan, Ezra W
Date Issued
October 2017
Journal
Sociological Science
Publisher
Society for Sociological Science
Citation
Kim, Minjae, and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan. “Faking It Is Hard to Do: Entrepreneurial Norm Enforcement and Suspicions of Deviance.” Sociological Science 4 (2017): 580–610.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Recent research suggests that many norms may be upheld by closet deviants who engage in enforcement so as to hide their deviance. But various empirical accounts indicate that audiences are often quite sensitive to this ulterior motive. Our theory and experimental evidence identify when inferences of ulterior motive are drawn and clarify the implications of such inferences. Our main test pivots on two contextual factors: (1) the extent to which individuals might try to strategically feign commitment and (2) the contrast between "mandated" enforcement, where individuals are asked for their opinions of deviance, and "entrepreneurial" enforcement, where enforcement requires initiative to interrupt the flow of social interaction. When the context is one where individuals might have a strategic motive and enforcement requires entrepreneurial initiative, suspicions are aroused because the enforcers could have remained silent and enjoyed plausible deniability that they had witnessed the deviance or recognized its significance. Given that the mandate for enforcement might be rare, a key implication is that norms might frequently be underenforced.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.15195/V4.A24
