Following the Norm or Following the Crowds?

• In Event: Evolving Legal Norms Regarding Hate Speech in Japan

Abstract

How does anti-discrimination norm evolve in democratic societies? And under what conditions do people conform to such a norm? In this paper, we investigate the role of information about social norms in shaping people's policy preferences. More specifically, we examine whether and how different types of injunctive normative message—anti-discrimination and bandwagon—influence people's views on hate speech regulation against minorities in Japan.
Classic psychology studies suggest that social norms and peer pressure have a substantive influence on people's cognition, attitude and behavior: people conform to the majority views and behaviors, or what other people expect. Recent studies on people's views on racial and ethnic minorities show that presentations or a hint of anti-discrimination norm help people suppress their discriminatory views. Yet, we still have little knowledge about whether such a norm extends to people's public policy preferences involving minorities such as hate speech regulation.
In public opinion studies, influences of social norms have often been described, or conceptualized as a "bandwagon effect" or "social desirability bias." While both can be seen as the result of injunctive social norms, they can theoretically be distinguished: conforming to the majority opinions (bandwagon) and answering socially desirable responses in a survey. On hate speech regulation, jumping on a bandwagon does not require considering the anti-discrimination norm, but can simply follow the majority opinion about what should be done about this issue. On the other hand, giving a socially desirable response does not require considering whether the message is supported by majority, but needs understanding, and perhaps internalizing the anti-discrimination norm. Examining which message influences whose policy preferences contributes to better understandings of how social norms evolve in the society, especially when the policy is relatively new like a hate speech regulation in Japan.
We explore this by using a survey experiment in which two types of message are randomly assigned to its participants. The bandwagon was operationalized by providing only numeric information indicating that the majority supports a policy regulating hate speech against minority groups, and the anti-discrimination message as a socially desirable view was operationalized by a clear message against discrimination and that of promoting mutual respects, constructed from wordings in the government's official flyers on hate speech regulations. The former information minimizes the normative content, whereas the latter message suppresses the possibility of bandwagon by stating "this may not be a majority view." As our dependent variable, we asked participants if they would support strengthening the hate speech regulations against ethnic minorities (Korean residents in Japan) or people with disabilities (randomly assigned).
We found that the anti-discrimination message did not substantively change their policy preferences, but that the bandwagon information slightly pushed their preferences to favoring stricter regulation. We also found that those who are predisposed to give socially desirable answers (a moderator) were more influenced by this bandwagon information. Interestingly, they were also influenced by the anti-discrimination message, but in a way that this message makes them favor less strict regulation.
We can draw some implications for understanding how the social norms can evolve in the society. First, the null effect of anti-discrimination message may suggest that the anti-discrimination norm is not established in Japan yet, or even if it exists, it does not link to hate speech regulation against minorities. Second, some part of conformity to the injunctive norm can start from caring what other people say rather than understanding and internalizing the norm.

Authors

• Go Murakami, Ritsumeikan University

• Yoshitaka Nishizawa, Doshisha University