RESPONSES TO INJUNCTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE NORMS 44 Experiment 3 With evidence from the first two experiments supporting our ide ationalcfordi crences in the Participants then received information about completing extra ment 3 to examining the role of effortful self-regulation in re mmediately rather than after finishing a series of other tasks italizing on tendencies e (Burkle vill you complete?"Afte veys they would agree to complete,par e the full debriefing No xtra surveys were actually administered to ected self-regulator y depletion to have the oppositee ause njunctiv ehaneoeteonh Results and Discussion ng goals of accuracy/eff and socia As expected,a significant interaction was obtained between val)actua g the 4sondniol 5.39, pein吗goa igni t (Fs 24).Also s expected simple effects test Method 115 ur the mM=422 hen sel redit toward a cl h reau nt fo beir in en ns ed grou ed at dhigh-fregu her by partition 691a8 vith the inants woule whe depleted o experin ntal instruct e or negativ participants by the by the intera irst part of the rved as a m and Krull 1988)0 trated that willful control of atten ofa ion alse 2007 In the task nartici ants viewed a siler t yideo clin of a w g intervie vords (e. disk th might h tely woma app nstructions regarding these words.As a check on possible mood on.we opted against its inclusion in the experimerExperiment 3 With evidence from the first two experiments supporting our rationale for differences in the cognitive and affective reactions to injunctive and descriptive norms, we shifted our focus in Experi￾ment 3 to examining the role of effortful self-regulation in re￾sponding to the norms. Specifically, we manipulated the capacity for effortful self-regulation through use of an attention control task and then measured conformity to a descriptive or an injunctive norm for completing optional surveys. If one were to assume that both norm types influence behavior by capitalizing on tendencies toward heuristic responding, then, as with persuasion (Burkley, 2008; Wheeler et al., 2007) and several compliance techniques (Fennis et al., 2009), depletion should be expected to increase the effectiveness of both norms. However, we have made this assump￾tion only for descriptive norms. For injunctive norms, we ex￾pected self-regulatory depletion to have the opposite effect— decreasing conformity. On the basis of our theory, this is because injunctive norms create a conflict between the dual/ dueling goals of accuracy/efficiency and social approval. Thus, following an injunctive norm (and pursuing the goal of social approval) actually requires self-control in the form of resisting the competing goal of accuracy/efficiency. Depleting individuals of the capacity for such resistance should therefore decrease the effectiveness of the injunctive norm. Method Participants. Participants were 116 students (61 women, 55 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 six participants who were seated at private computer workstations and visually shielded from one another by partitions. Design and procedure. The design was a 2 (self-regulatory capacity: low or high) 2 (norm: injunctive or descriptive) between-subjects factorial.2 All experimental instructions, tasks, and measures were administered via computer using MediaLab v2006.1.10 experiment delivery software (Jarvis, 2006b). In the first part of the experiment, participants were asked to engage in what was described as an “impression formation” task, which actually served as a manipulation of self-regulatory capacity. Gil￾bert, Pelham, and Krull (1988) originally developed this task as a manipulation of attention control. However, subsequent research has demonstrated that willful control of attention also requires self-regulatory capacity, and, thus, this manipulation can be used as an effective stimulus for self-regulatory depletion (e.g., DeWall, Baumeister, Stillman, & Gailliot, 2007; Gailliot et al., 2007; Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003; Vohs et al., 2005). In the task, participants viewed a silent video clip of a woman being interviewed and were instructed to form an impression of her on the basis of her nonverbal behaviors. Throughout the approx￾imately 4-min interview clip, neutral words (e.g., disk, tire, pole) appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of participants’ screens. In the low-self-regulatory capacity condition, participants were asked to avoid reading these words and, if distracted, to immedi￾ately redirect their attention to the woman. In the high-self￾regulatory capacity condition, participants received no explicit instructions regarding these words. As a check on possible mood￾related effects of the self-regulation task, participants completed the PANAS scale (Watson et al., 1988) immediately following the video clip. Participants then received information about completing extra surveys that was consistent in all respects to the scenario presented in Experiment 2 except that they expected to make their decision immediately rather than after finishing a series of other tasks. Directly following the delivery of the descriptive or injunctive norm, all participants received the dependent measure, which took the form of the following question: “You can choose to complete up to 10 extra surveys. Each short survey takes about 1–2 minutes to complete. How many extra surveys will you complete?” After indicating how many surveys they would agree to complete, par￾ticipants responded to a funneled suspicion probe and received a full debriefing. No extra surveys were actually administered to participants. Results and Discussion As expected, a significant interaction was obtained between self-regulation condition and norm type, F(1, 112) 5.39, p .022, p 2 .046 (see Figure 2). Neither of the main effects was significant (Fs  2.4). Also as expected, simple effects tests revealed that those exposed to the injunctive norm agreed to complete significantly fewer of the optional surveys when self￾regulatory capacity was low (M 2.21) than high (M 4.84), F(1, 112) 7.73, p .006, p 2 .065. Furthermore, and also consistent with our theory, the injunctive norm (M 2.21) was less effective than the descriptive norm (M 4.22) when self￾regulatory capacity was low, F(1, 112) 4.23, p .042, p 2 .036. Although we found no significant difference between low￾and high-self-regulation conditions for participants exposed to the descriptive norm, the pattern of means (Mlow 4.22; Mhigh 3.69) was consistent with the expectation that participants would be more likely to follow the descriptive norm when depleted of their capacity to self-regulate. The number of surveys participants volunteered to complete was not predicted by positive or negative affect as measured by the PANAS scale, nor by the interaction between affect and norm type, thus reducing the possibility that confounding mood effects were responsible for differences in conformity levels. 2 We decided against the inclusion of a no-norm control condition based in part on Aarts and Dijksterhuis’ (2003) evidence that certain social situations (e.g., a library context) can automatically evoke cognitive (e.g., heightened accessibility of the concept “silence”) and behavioral (e.g., decreased voice intensity) responses that are aligned with norms associated with those situations. We thought it likely that participants would have existing conceptions of norms associated either with the laboratory context or with the scenario of volunteering for optional tasks and that these conceptions could influence behavior in the absence of an explicit norm manipulation. Particularly problematic for a “control” condition, we thought it unlikely that the normative associations with an optional survey scenario would be as uniformly similar across participants as one might expect for a library scenario (i.e., completing extra surveys might be perceived by some as typical and by others as atypical; by some as moderately approved and by others as strongly approved). Thus, without the ability to actually control normative associations with the scenario in a no-norm condition, we opted against its inclusion in the experiment. RESPONSES TO INJUNCTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE NORMS 441 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.