Mere perceived visibility changes prosocial norms even without actual observation

Evidence

In a series of clever experiments, Chenbo Zhong, Vanessa Bohns, and Francesca Gino created what they call “illusory anonymity,” the false feeling of being hidden from view. Under the guise of testing a new product, they randomly assigned University of Toronto student participants to either wear dark sunglasses or clear eyeglasses. Then, in what appeared to be an unrelated task, participants were given 6 dollars and the opportunity to share any of that amount with an anonymous stranger. (This is the well-known one-shot Dictator Game, which I will describe in more detail later.) Results showed that clear eyeglass–wearing participants gave on average 2.71, whereas dark sunglass–wearing participants gave on average 1.81. This is a sizable difference, but this effect is interesting not because of its size. Wearing dark glasses did not merely reduce donations—it changed the norm for how to behave in this situation. That is, wearing clear glasses led to an equal sharing norm (2.71 is statistically identical to $3—that is, splitting the amount evenly), whereas dark glasses induced a more selfish norm. Other experiments by Zhong and his colleagues found that being in a dim room led to greater rates of cheating than being in a well-lit room. As they put it, “a good lamp is the best police.” — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 87

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s core thesis: the fumi-e ritual works because it manufactures visible, public apostasy — the inverse of illusory anonymity. Connects to Norenzayan’s Big God mechanism and Baumard’s partner-choice framing. — connects to: Social norms exercise overwhelming force over even trained observers of behavior — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1507
• SEED: Angle: ‘a good lamp is the best police’ — how visibility itself, not enforcement, drives cooperation; parallels censorship-by-surveillance and omniscient-deity mechanisms.
• SHARE: The 2.71 vs 1.81 sunglasses/Dictator-Game result is a crisp experiment worth sending to anyone interested in norm psychology or behavioral economics.