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INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES Bodies Obliged and Unbound: Differentiated Response Tendencies for Injunctive and Descriptive Social Norms Ryan P. Jacobson Arizona State University Chad R. Mortensen Metropolitan State College of Denver Robert B. Cialdini Arizona State University The authors suggest that injunctive and descriptive social norms engage different psychological response tendencies when made selectively salient. On the basis of suggestions derived from the focus theory of normative conduct and from consideration of the norms’ functions in social life, the authors hypothesized that the 2 norms would be cognitively associated with different goals, would lead individuals to focus on different aspects of self, and would stimulate different levels of conflict over conformity decisions. Additionally, a unique role for effortful self-regulation was hypothesized for each type of norm— used as a means to resist conformity to descriptive norms but as a means to facilitate conformity for injunctive norms. Four experiments supported these hypotheses. Experiment 1 demonstrated differences in the norms’ associations to the goals of making accurate/efficient decisions and gaining/maintaining social approval. Experiment 2 provided evidence that injunctive norms lead to a more interpersonally oriented form of self-awareness and to a greater feeling of conflict about conformity decisions than descriptive norms. In the final 2 experiments, conducted in the lab (Experiment 3) and in a naturalistic environment (Experiment 4), self-regulatory depletion decreased conformity to an injunctive norm (Experiments 3 and 4) and increased conformity to a descriptive norm (Experiment 4)— even though the norms advocated identical behaviors. By illustrating differentiated response tendencies for each type of social norm, this research provides new and converging support for the focus theory of normative conduct. Keywords: social norms, social influence, conformity, self-regulation Initially controversial within social psychology, the concept of social norms has been redeemed in recent decades by research demonstrating its power to explain and predict an array of different behaviors (Rivis & Sheeran, 2003; J. R. Smith & Louis, 2009), such as recycling (Schultz, 1999), littering (Cialdini, Kallgren, & Reno, 1991; Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990; Kallgren, Reno, & Cialdini, 2000; Reno, Cialdini, & Kallgren, 1993), energy conservation (Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008; Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein, & Griskevicius, 2007), alcohol use (see Borsari & Carey, 2003, for a meta-analytic review), speech volume and table manners (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003), tax evasion (Wenzel, 2004), and student gambling (Larimer & Neighbors, 2003). The resurgence of this concept has been stimulated, in part, by a set of key conceptual refinements comprised within Cialdini and colleagues’ focus theory of normative conduct (Cialdini, in press; Cialdini et al., 1990). In brief, this theory emphasizes the need to distinguish between descriptive and injunctive forms of normative information, which are differentially relevant to two fundamental human goals (e.g., making accurate/efficient decisions and gaining/maintaining social approval) and can have unique effects on behavior when made selectively focal. Although the evidence for the main tenets of this theory is compelling (see Cialdini, in press, for a review), the intervening psychological processes (e.g., cognitive, affective, and self-regulatory processes) involved in responding to each norm type are not fully understood. This article was published Online First December 20, 2010. Ryan P. Jacobson, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University; Chad R. Mortensen, Department of Psychology, Metropolitan State College of Denver; Robert B. Cialdini, Departments of Psychology and Marketing, Arizona State University. Ryan P. Jacobson is now at the Department of Organizational Studies, Anderson School of Management, University of New Mexico. We thank Kathryn Jacobson, Krista Ranby, and Allecia Reid for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article, Amanda Jacobson and Tressa Mortensen for their careful editorial review of the document, Lynda Mae for permission to collect data in her classes, Uriah Anderson for his technical assistance in video formatting, and the dedicated team of undergraduate research assistants who made collection of these data possible. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ryan P. Jacobson, Anderson School of Management, MSC05 3090, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-001. E-mail: rjacobso@mgt.unm.edu Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011, Vol. 100, No. 3, 433– 448 © 2010 American Psychological Association 0022-3514/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0021470 433 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

In the present research, we advance such understanding by demonstrating that an impaired capacity for effortful selfregulation (i.e., reduction in “willpower”) increases the effectiveness of social influence attempts that highlight descriptive norms but decreases the effectiveness of attempts that highlight injunctive norms. Additionally, and consistent with the proposed conceptual rationale for this distinction, we also demonstrate differences (a) in the norms’ effects on the cognitive accessibility of goal-related concepts, (b) on attention directed toward intrapersonal versus interpersonal aspects of self, and (c) on the experience of conflict over decisions to follow or disregard the norm. Our theoretical argument for these differences, discussed subsequently, is derived both from implications of the focus theory of normative conduct and from functional considerations of the roles of effortful self-regulation and normative influence in social life. The Focus Theory of Normative Conduct An initial observation underlying focus theory was that the general term norm, both in common and scientific usage, has often been used to refer to two different types of social information (Schaffer, 1983). Cialdini and colleagues (Cialdini et al., 1991, 1990) labeled the first type of information the descriptive norm, which refers to the perceived prevalence or typicality of a given behavior, and the second type the injunctive norm, which refers to the perceived degree of social approval/disapproval for the behavior. According to the first of two main propositions of the theory, distinguishing between these two types of information is crucial because each is highly relevant for a different fundamental human goal. Whereas the descriptive norm provides information that is particularly relevant for the intrapersonal goal of behaving effectively or accurately (i.e., choosing correctly), the injunctive norm is particularly relevant for the interpersonal goal of building and maintaining social relationships (i.e., social approval; Cialdini & Trost, 1998). The distinction between these two goals as uniquely responsible for different forms of social influence has a relatively long tradition in social psychology (e.g., Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). A key insight of focus theory is that this general principle of goal-directed influence also applies to social norms and can enhance the ability of researchers to understand and predict their effects on behavior. The second proposition of focus theory is that descriptive or injunctive norms will affect an individual’s behavior only to the extent that each form of information is currently salient—a state that can be affected by both situational (e.g., message framing) and dispositional factors (e.g., strong personal endorsement of a particular norm). This addresses a key challenge for understanding the unique effects of these two types of normative information—the fact that both descriptive and injunctive norms are often simultaneously available for any given behavior. For example, despite general social disapproval for littering, the descriptive evidence in a given setting can indicate that this behavior is actually quite common. Furthermore, these norms can either be incongruent (as in the prior example) or congruent (e.g., littering disapproved and uncommon)— depending both on the particular behavior and the particular context in question. Despite this complexity, it remains possible to examine the unique effects of each norm type because these are determined by the norm’s subjective salience rather than by its objective availability in the situation. As an illustration, in an experiment conducted in a heavily littered parking garage (i.e., descriptive norm indicating a high prevalence of littering), Cialdini and colleagues (Cialdini et al., 1990, Study 4) demonstrated that the presence of a competing injunctive norm against littering (e.g., the litter was swept into large piles) tended to reduce littering behavior— but only when that norm was made salient by the presence of a confederate littering directly in front of the swept litter piles. Thus, in some situations, procedures that selectively heighten the salience of a descriptive or an injunctive norm can lead to distinctly different behavioral responses (i.e., increased vs. decreased littering). Focusing primarily on the behavioral effects of norm salience in naturalistic environments, a large body of field-based research has supported these two main propositions of the theory (see Cialdini, in press, for a review). However, implications of the theory for differences in the intervening psychological responses to the two norm types have remained largely unexplored. The present investigation targets this gap—testing predicted differences in the cognitive, affective, and self-regulatory (as well as behavioral) responses to descriptive and injunctive social norms in lab-based and naturalistic environments. In addition to the implications of the focus theory, our predictions were derived from research and theory focused on self-regulation as an effortful capacity, prior evidence for self-regulation in other forms of social influence and persuasion, and from functional considerations of the roles of the two types of normative information in social life. Effortful Self-Regulation Within the past two decades, a sizable literature has focused on the manner in which the self exerts control over inner states and overt behaviors (see Baumeister & Vohs, 2004). Evidence suggests that effortful self-regulation is involved in (among other processes and behaviors) impulse restraint, decision making, emotion regulation, thought suppression, and a variety of different kinds of physical and mental task performances (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Eisenberg, Smith, Sadovsky, & Spinrad, 2004; Vohs et al., 2008). Despite clear differences in the processes/behaviors involving effortful self-regulation (e.g., differences in cognitive requirements, role of affect, physical requirements), these have been shown to rely on a general resource that is limited but renewable (Baumeister et al., 1998). A metaphor of muscular strength has often been used to describe the nature of this self-regulatory capacity—as a general purpose tool that can be temporarily “fatigued” and then regenerated through inactivity or “rest” (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000; Schmeichel & Baumeister, 2004). Additionally, the consumption of glucose has been shown to attenuate the depleting effects of self-regulatory tasks (Gailliot et al., 2007). This provides evidence that the notion of effortful self-regulation as akin to strength has a tangible, physiological basis—as well as having illustrative value in describing a key element of the self’s role in controlling behavior. Self-Regulation in Persuasion and Compliance Effortful self-regulation has also been shown to play a role in individuals’ responses to persuasive messages and specific compliance techniques. Consistently, this research has supported the 434 JACOBSON, MORTENSEN, AND CIALDINI This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

notion that self-regulatory resources are involved in resisting attempts to change attitudes or behavior. Wheeler and colleagues (Wheeler, Brin˜ol, & Hermann, 2007) investigated the effects of self-regulatory depletion on responses to counterattitudinal messages, demonstrating increased persuasion— especially when message arguments were specious. This led them to conclude that depletion had reduced participants’ abilities to generate counterarguments to the message, thus increasing persuasion. Burkley (2008) reported similar results for the effect of depletion on persuasion while also demonstrating that exposure to a persuasive message impaired subsequent self-regulation performance on an unrelated task. Fennis, Janssen, and Vohs (2009) investigated the role of selfregulation in four social influence techniques geared toward inducing compliance with a request: foot-in-the-door (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), door-in-the-face (Cialdini et al., 1975), low-ball (Cialdini, Cacioppo, Bassett, & Miller, 1978), and an approach designed to induce liking for the requestor. As with a number of other tactics for inducing compliance, these operate in part by capitalizing on individuals’ tendencies to rely on decision-making heuristics (e.g., consistency, reciprocity, and liking; Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). In their research, Fennis and colleagues demonstrated a reduced capacity for self-regulation following exposure to the initial stage of a foot-in-the-door technique, increased compliance with door-in-the-face and liking-based techniques among participants whose self-regulatory capacities had been depleted, and higher compliance with a low-ball technique among participants who were dispositionally low in the capacity for effortful self-regulation. On the basis of this evidence, the authors concluded that these four compliance techniques affect behavior by inducing self-regulatory depletion—which increases the heuristic responding tendencies that underlie these particular forms of social influence. This evidence for the role of effortful self-regulation in persuasion and compliance provides a clear reason to expect that impairment of this capacity should increase the degree to which social norms affect behavior. If social norms also capitalize on heuristic processing tendencies, then self-regulatory depletion should amplify their effects by decreasing the ability to carefully consider behavioral alternatives. However, there is reason to expect that descriptive and injunctive norms do not both influence behavior via this same underlying mechanism, and, thus, self-regulatory depletion should not have the same effects on the two forms of normative social influence. Although we do expect self-regulatory depletion to increase conformity to descriptive norms, we actually expect it to have the opposite effect for injunctive norms— decreasing the extent to which they influence behavior. This expectation is derived both from a closer consideration of the goaldirected nature of normative social influence and from a functional perspective on the role of self-regulatory processes in social life. Functional Perspective on Self-Regulation The fundamental function of self-regulation is to alter behavior, and this often requires the suppression of impulses that threaten to undermine desired long-term goals (Baumeister, Schmeichel, & Vohs, 2007; Baumeister & Vohs, 2007). Thus, conflicts between alternative motivations serve as a central feature underlying most self-regulatory dilemmas (Baumeister & Vohs, 2007). For example, one’s immediate impulse is to devour the leftover slice of decadently frosted double chocolate birthday cake, but this motive conflicts with a long-term desire to appear slim and attractive. Thus, maintaining one’s diet requires self-regulatory effort directed toward resisting the powerful and immediate cake craving. As a number of researchers have asserted (e.g., Heatherton & Vohs, 1998; Polivy, 1998), social standards (explicit social pressures or internalized social standards) play a key role in stimulating the need for self-regulation of behavior. Thus, self-regulation often involves a specific form of conflict that pits the desire for social approval against self-interested motives that are more independent and immediate in nature. In fact, Baumeister and colleagues (Baumeister, 2005; Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Twenge, 2005) have argued that resolving this form of conflict serves as the fundamental role for self-regulation in social life—as a capacity that allows restraint of immediate self-interests that could interfere with the long-term benefits of cooperative social behaviors. As these authors (Baumeister et al., 2005) explained in their research on the self-regulatory consequences of social exclusion: The broader context for this investigation is the view that human social life contains an implicit bargain. People have a strong need to belong, and they survive, flourish, and reproduce by means of inclusion; however, they also have naturally selfish impulses that create conflict and friction among neighbors. If people are to live together, they must curb some of these selfish impulses and make certain other sacrifices. (p. 590) A wide range of research is consistent with the notion that self-regulation is essential in helping the individual negotiate conflicts between an interpersonal drive for social approval and more intrapersonally driven (i.e., “selfish”) motives. For example, the trait of self-monitoring, which focuses on the tendency to control one’s behavior in social settings, is positively related to selfregulatory performance (Seeley & Gardner, 2003). Additionally, self-presentational behaviors draw on the general capacity for effortful self-regulation (Vohs, Baumeister, & Ciarocco, 2005), and self-regulatory depletion reduces the likelihood of costly forms of helping that require the suppression of immediate selfinterests (DeWall, Baumeister, Gailliot, & Maner, 2008). Furthermore, engaging in difficult or “high maintenance” social interactions depletes self-regulatory capacity (Finkel et al., 2006). Perhaps because effortful self-regulation is so centrally linked to adhering to social standards, being rejected or excluded by a group has also been shown to reduce performance on tasks that require self-regulation (Baumeister et al., 2005). Finally, a wealth of evidence links impaired self-regulation to a variety of negative social outcomes (e.g., destructive relationship behavior, expressions of prejudice, psychopathology; Finkel & Campbell, 2001; Monteith, 1993; Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). A Complementary Role for Injunctive Norms An understanding of this important function of self-regulation—to promote resolution of conflicts between interests of the independent self and the social collective—suggests that this capacity is likely to be involved in facilitating the influence of injunctive social norms. In communicating social standards for behavior, injunctive norms are also clearly relevant to Baumeister and colleagues’ (Baumeister et al., 2005) notion of the implicit bargain of social life. As theorists have argued (e.g., Bicchieri, RESPONSES TO INJUNCTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE NORMS 435 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

2006; Lahti & Weinstein, 2005),1 responding to injunctive norms often involves the experience of dual (and dueling) motives. As an illustration, consider a well-known passage from the novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In the passage, puckish Tom is assigned to whitewash Aunt Polly’s front fence as a penance for one of his many transgressions. On the sun-drenched Saturday morning in which he is to serve his sentence, Tom must decide between behavior prescribed by a salient injunctive norm (i.e., he “should” respect his guardian Aunt Polly and dutifully whitewash the fence) and what, at the moment, he might rather do (e.g., play pirates on an abandoned, ramshackle riverboat). More mundane examples demonstrating the relevance of this conflict to injunctive norms are pervasive in daily social life: Just available front row tickets to our favorite band must compete with a spouse’s reminder that we are obligated to dine with our ill-tempered in-laws. Although we might love to spend a beautiful Friday afternoon at the beach or the golf course, a colleague’s e-mail message reminds us that we really ought to endure the mind-numbingly unproductive, multihour department meeting. Although self-regulatory capacity appears to provide the “strength” necessary to restrain drives toward immediate intrapersonal goals in these cases, a critical role for injunctive norms is to indicate when and to what extent such restraint is necessary. In this manner, injunctive norms and effortful self-regulation can often serve as functional complements in addressing challenges of the implicit bargain of social life—increasing the likelihood of uncomfortable dinners with the in-laws, well-attended Friday afternoon department meetings, whitewashed fences, and a variety of other behaviors that are socially, if not personally, desirable. Thus, contrary to what may be expected from prior research on persuasion and compliance, self-regulation may actually serve to facilitate rather than restrict the influence of injunctive norms. Self-Regulation and Descriptive Norms In contrast, the information communicated by descriptive norms appears less relevant to this conflict between immediate intrapersonal impulses and long-term interpersonal goals. By communicating what is typical in a given context, descriptive norms provide heuristic cues for behaviors that are likely to be desirable or immediately advantageous for the individual (i.e., aligned with intrapersonal motives). For example, out of countless flavors of ice cream, evidence that a certain variety is a shop’s “best seller” suggests that the choice of that flavor has a particularly strong likelihood of satisfying one’s hedonistic craving for a high-calorie, high-fat dairy product. Even though this information is derived from social behavior and injunctive inferences can be made about the possible approval or disapproval associated with those actions, this information is most clearly and most immediately relevant to intrapersonal (i.e., making accurate/efficient decisions) rather than interpersonal goals (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). Supporting this contention, and consistent with the ice cream example, individuals tend to use descriptive information to guide behavior especially in situations that are novel, ambiguous, uncertain, or threatening (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; Griskevicius, Goldstein, Mortensen, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006; Sherif, 1936; Tesser, Campbell, & Mickler, 1983). Cialdini (2009) has described this use of descriptive social information as the decision-making heuristic of “social proof,” suggesting that it serves as a time- and effort-saving shortcut that can promote effective behavior across a wide variety of circumstances. Thus, the role of effortful selfregulation in responding to descriptive norms is likely to be similar as to that demonstrated for persuasive messages and compliance techniques—as a means to override the tendency to use this information as a heuristic cue for behavior. Although following descriptive norms may most often lead to behaviors that are more accurate or efficient than would have been possible without this information, this is not universally true in all cases. As is demonstrated by the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance, using descriptive norms as behavioral cues can at times lead to very negative outcomes, like an increased tendency toward binge drinking (e.g., Prentice & Miller, 1993) or a decreased tendency to escape emergency situations involving personal peril (e.g., Latane´ & Darley, 1968). Additionally, Berger and Rand (2008) have provided evidence that social influence attempts using descriptive norms can actually decrease (rather than increase) compliance when the descriptive norm is associated with an undesirable group. This implies that individuals tend to exert at least a limited degree of self-regulatory effort toward considering the implications of the descriptive norm and possible behavioral alternatives— helping to counteract the possibility that following the norm may not be consistent with self-interest. Given this tendency, impairing the ability to engage in such effortful cognitive activity (via self-regulatory depletion) should be expected to increase the degree of conformity to descriptive social norms. Implications for Cognition and Affect Consideration of these different roles for injunctive and descriptive norms in social life also leads to the expectation of differences in the typical cognitive and affective responses to the norms. The salience of an injunctive norm should lead individuals to consider their behavior as it relates to both the intrapersonal goal of accuracy/efficiency and the interpersonal goal of social approval because it suggests the possibility of a situation in which social standards may not be aligned with immediate self-interests. In contrast, thoughts associated with social approval should not necessarily be stimulated by the salience of a descriptive norm. Rather, as a cue for accurate or efficient behavior, the descriptive norm should lead individuals to consider this information about the behavior’s prevalence primarily as it relates to the intrapersonal goal of choosing correctly. The norms also might be expected to have different consequences for attention directed toward intrapersonal versus interpersonal aspects of self. To the extent that injunctive norms encourage cooperative and socially beneficial behaviors, they should stimulate a comparatively greater interpersonal focus of attention (i.e., focus on group memberships and social relationships). In contrast, descriptive norms should stimulate a focus on more intrapersonal aspects of self because they are most immediately relevant to intrapersonal rather than interpersonal goals. Finally, the salience of dual and potentially dueling goals for an injunctive norm should lead individuals to experience conflict over decisions 1 Bicchieri (2006) uses the term social norms, and Lahti and Weinstein (2005) use the term moral norms to refer to the category of norms we label as “injunctive norms.” 436 JACOBSON, MORTENSEN, AND CIALDINI This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

to conform or not conform. Conversely, the descriptive norm should not stimulate such conflict because it is primarily relevant to a single intrapersonal goal (i.e., choosing correctly). The Present Research A critical point for the present research is our contention that these somewhat unique forms of responding may be associated with the salience of the two norms regardless of the actual behavior advocated by the norm. In other words, we predicted that these different types of response tendencies would be engaged for the norms even in cases for which the same behaviors were involved. A spate of evidence has demonstrated that goal-directed behavior, including goal-directed responses to social norms (e.g., Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003), can be initiated automatically in response to salient cues in the environment (see Dijksterhuis, Chartrand, & Aarts, 2007, for a review). It has even been shown that this nonconscious initiation of goal-directed responding can lead to effortful self-regulatory responses (e.g., Ackerman, Goldstein, Shapiro, & Bargh, 2009). Just as cues for particular social environments (e.g., library) can engage tendencies toward behaviors that are habitually associated with those environments (e.g., lowered speech volume; Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003), we suggest that descriptive or injunctive frames for a behavior can lead to response tendencies that reflect the cognitive, affective, and self-regulatory responses most commonly associated with these forms of normative information in social life. Thus, interestingly, very subtle differences in normative framing may have relatively major consequences for individual decision making—altering the evaluation of a behavior’s relevance for the self and stimulating somewhat different emotional and self-regulatory responses. We report four experiments in which we tested hypothesized differences in the cognitive, affective, self-regulatory, and, ultimately, behavioral consequences of descriptive and injunctive norm activation. In Experiment 1, we examined the effects of descriptive and injunctive norm salience on cognitions related to the goals of accuracy/efficiency and social approval. In Experiment 2, we explored differences in self-awareness and in the experience of decision-making conflict that result from descriptive versus injunctive framing of a behavioral norm. Using a lab-based attention control task to manipulate self-regulatory capacity, we examined in Experiment 3 the effects of depletion on conformity to descriptive versus injunctive norms. Finally, Experiment 4 provided a conceptual replication of the third experiment, but we used a naturally occurring rather than lab-based stimulus for selfregulatory depletion. Experiment 1 In Experiment 1, we examined the extent to which the two types of norms are cognitively associated with the fundamental goals of accuracy/efficiency and social approval. On the basis of the suggestions of focus theory regarding the primary goals driving conformity for each type of norm and on a functional analysis of the role of each norm in social life, we hypothesized that descriptive information would be associated with accuracy/efficiency-related concepts and that injunctive information would be associated with both accuracy/efficiency and social approval-related concepts. We drew on associative network and connectionist principles of memory organization (see E. R. Smith, 1998, for a review) to test this hypothesis, reasoning that the activation of norm-related concepts should spread to semantic representations (including goal- and motivation-related concepts) that are most closely associated with these norms in memory. Evidence for semantic associations between particular norms and particular goal concepts should therefore reflect the types of goal/motive considerations that are most likely to be present after being exposed to the norm. A body of research demonstrating (a) that goals and motive states can be automatically activated by environmental cues and (b) that this nonconscious activation can lead to behaviors aligned with those goals/motives provides strong evidence to support this rationale (e.g., Aarts et al., 2005; Aarts, Custers, & Holland, 2007; Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee Chai, Barndollar, & Trötschel, 2001; Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003; Moskowitz, Li, & Kirk, 2004; Sheeran et al., 2005). We designed a lexical decision task that involved subliminal priming with norm-related words to explore the cognitive associations between the two types of norms and the two goals. On the basis of our theory, priming with words related to descriptive norms (e.g., typical, widespread) should increase the accessibility of words related to the intrapersonal goal of behaving accurately/ efficiently (e.g., accurate, beneficial) but should not increase the accessibility of words related to the interpersonal goal of gaining/ maintaining social approval (e.g., approval, dependent). In contrast, priming with words related to injunctive norms (e.g., ought, responsibility) should increase the accessibility of both types of goal-related words. Thus, to test this hypothesis, we paired descriptive-related, injunctive-related, and neutral primes with target goal words (accuracy/efficiency and social approval) and examined the extent to which the norm primes decreased or increased response times for word/nonword decisions (i.e., facilitated or suppressed decision-making responses). Method Participants. Participants were 87 students (49 women, 38 men) from introductory psychology classes who received partial credit toward a class research requirement for their involvement in the experiment. Experiment sessions included groups of two to eight participants who were seated at private computer workstations and visually shielded from one another by partitions. Word primes and goal targets. Three categories of normative word primes were created. Neutral primes (e.g., stream, rectangle, fence, trees) reflected common nonsocial words selected on the basis of their lack of norm-related connotations. Consistent with the suggestions of focus theory regarding the essential information communicated by each type of norm, descriptive norm primes reflected the concept of common/prevalent (e.g., typical, widespread, usual, popular), and injunctive norm primes reflected the concept of social obligation (e.g., should, ought, responsibility, duty). Three categories of target words were also created. These included the focal categories of words related to the intrapersonal goal of accuracy/efficiency (e.g., accurate, beneficial, desire, efficient) and the interpersonal goal of social approval (e.g., approval, others, dependent, team). In keeping with the aims of a lexical decision task, nonwords (e.g., kourge, shrouthen, dwex, knurdge) matched in length with the target norm words were also included. RESPONSES TO INJUNCTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE NORMS 437 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly