Emotional, cognitive and behavioural reactions to various norm violations across culture: Examining the moderating roles of cultural tightness and strength of group identity

This study aimed to explore the impact of various norm violation conditions on participants' negative emotional, tolerance, and external attributional reactions. Additionally, the study investigated the moderating roles of strength of group identity and perceived cultural tightness in relation to the violator's ingroup/outgroup membership, severity of the violation, violator's gender, and ingroup violator's rank on reactions to norm violation. Two separate studies were conducted, involving a total of 946 participants from universities in Ghana and Turkey. In Study 1, 311 participants from Ghana and 210 from Turkey were randomly assigned to 8 experimental conditions. Each participant read a vignette depicting a norm violation of high/low severity, committed by a male/female ingroup/outgroup member. After reading the vignettes, participants completed questions on negative emotion, tolerance, and external attributional reactions. Prior to the vignettes, participants completed group identification and perceived cultural tightness scales. In Study 2, using the same procedure as Study 1, we investigated the role of an ingroup violator's rank in determining participants' reactions to the violation. A total of 214 Ghanaian and 211 Turkish participants were involved. In Study 1 the results showed that violator's group membership, severity of violation, and violator's gender affected participants' reactions to norm violation. Likewise, in Study 2, participants' reactions to norm violation varied significantly based on the rank of the ingroup violator. In both studies, there were significant moderating effects of perceived cultural tightness and strength of group identity. These findings highlight the complex dynamics involved in reactions to norm violation, consideraing multiple factors.