ArticleNature human behaviour2025
Why people follow rules.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Determinants of Rule-Breaking in Adolescence.Journal of adolescence · 2025Article
- Why people follow rules.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Encouraging people to set lower personal carbon budgets: anchoring is more effective than social reference groups.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The scenicness of historic buildings rivals that of natural features: evidence from crowdsourced photographs of English urban areas.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Co-evolution of behaviour and beliefs in social dilemmas: estimating material, social, cognitive and cultural determinants.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Why people follow rules, especially laws and social norms, is debated across the human sciences. The importance of intrinsic respect for rules is particularly controversial. To reveal the behavioural principles of rule-following, we develop CRISP, an interdisciplinary framework that explains rule-conformity C as a function of intrinsic respect for rules R, extrinsic incentives I, social expectations S and social preferences P. We deploy CRISP in four series of online experiments with 14,034 English-speaking participants. In our baseline experiments, 55-70% of participants conform to an arbitrary costly rule, even though they act anonymously and alone, and violations hurt no one. We show that people expect rule-conformity and view it as socially appropriate. Rule-breaking is contagious but remains moderate. Pro-social motives and extrinsic incentives increase rule-conformity, but unconditional rule-following and social expectations explain most of it. Our results demonstrate that respect for rules and social expectations are basic elements of rule-conformity that can explain why people follow laws and social norms even without extrinsic incentives and social preferences.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.