I do not necessarily disagree with the limitation that the moral argument watered down the demandingness. However, my intuition was that the framing of the “strong demandingness” condition was particularly likely to result in the expected backfire effect.
I think real-life strongly-demanding arguments are much more likely to use the collective “we”, acknowledge that this is not socially normal, and acknowledge the incongruence of this obligation with intuitions and psychology. I don’t think having this more forgiving/nuanced framing shifts it into a weaker demandingness . I appreciate that the study is also likely better as it is, but I think this is a limitation.
One of the variables we thought about manipulating was “who is the demand coming from”? The use of language here “I”, “We” and other expressions could easily make a difference (social norms are usually presented in terms of “X% of people believe”).
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the budget to test whether how much of a difference (if any) this made. It would definitely be worth following up on if we were able to get the funding.
Thank you for the research.
I do not necessarily disagree with the limitation that the moral argument watered down the demandingness. However, my intuition was that the framing of the “strong demandingness” condition was particularly likely to result in the expected backfire effect.
I think real-life strongly-demanding arguments are much more likely to use the collective “we”, acknowledge that this is not socially normal, and acknowledge the incongruence of this obligation with intuitions and psychology. I don’t think having this more forgiving/nuanced framing shifts it into a weaker demandingness . I appreciate that the study is also likely better as it is, but I think this is a limitation.
Thanks Scott, that’s a really good point.
One of the variables we thought about manipulating was “who is the demand coming from”? The use of language here “I”, “We” and other expressions could easily make a difference (social norms are usually presented in terms of “X% of people believe”).
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the budget to test whether how much of a difference (if any) this made. It would definitely be worth following up on if we were able to get the funding.
This is my intuition as well—the phrasing of the ‘strong demandingness’ seemed quite jarring compared to the usual language of donation page copy.