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Elections can change social norms

New study with first causal evidence.

A rollerpen and a tick box on a grey background

"Elections don't change anything?" Yes, they do, and possibly more than just the party in power. Elections can change people's ideas about what is ethically right and what is wrong, and that quickly. This shows a recent study by WiSo researchers Christoph Oslislo, Arno Apffelstaedt and Jana Freundt (Uni Fribourg). Using an online experiment, the three researchers found causal evidence for the effects of elections on social norms.

Social norms are often considered persistent long-standing social constructs. However, recent observations suggest that social norms can change rapidly as a result of election outcomes. For example, the UK experienced a sharp rise in hate crimes after the Brexit referendum. A United Nations report, among others, attributes that to the fact, that the referendum "normalised anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner rhetoric". On the other hand, research from the USA and Germany suggests that the electoral success of female candidates has had a positive impact on attitudes towards women in elections and in the workplace.

In an experiment with around 500 participants, Christoph Oslislo from the Institute for Economic Policy at the University of Cologne (iwp), Arno Apffelstaedt (Seminar of Corporate Development and Business Ethics at the WiSo faculty) and Jana Freundt from the Chair of Industrial Economics at the University of Fribourg investigated, how subjects rated the social appropriateness of sharing income with poorer people.

If no rule was given, sharing was widely considered socially appropriate. However, a given rule not to share, that was specified as chosen in a referendum, increased the spreading in the assessment of not sharing income considerably and thus undermined this consensus. Actions, that were previously judged socially inappropriate (no sharing) can thus become socially appropriate through election results. This also applies in the opposite case of prescribing a prosocial rule (sharing), albeit with a much smaller effect.

Through their setting, Christoph Oslislo, Arno Apfelstädt and Jana Freundt were able to exclude other social factors that affect the change of norms and may correlate with election results. In this respect, the study provides the first causal evidence for the influence of elections on social norms.

The influence of the election on social norms was also shown in a weakened form when the electoral process was democratically flawed, for example when an election fee or "poll tax" was introduced, when voters were bribed or when poorer voters were disenfranchised.