People Use Norms, Values, Codification, and Enforceability to Determine if a Rule Was Broken

Rules are essential for the successful coordination of large-scale societies, with official, codified rules (e.g., laws) proscribing behaviors for everyone in their jurisdiction. These rules ostensibly provide a clear signal about what is permitted or prohibited, making it straightforward to identify when they have been broken. However, signals from descriptive norms, moral prohibition, and (lack of) legitimacy of enforcement can sometimes provide conflicting accounts of what behaviors really violate rules, possibly shaping whether someone thinks a rule has been broken at all. Across three experiments (N = 2,264), we examined how each of these signals affect rule violation judgments. In Study 1, we used a variety of real rules in the US and found that all four signals—descriptive norms, codification, moral wrongness, and legitimacy of punishment—are associated with judgments of whether a rule was broken, but to varying degrees. Study 2 replicated these findings in a preregistered study. Study 3 experimentally manipulated these four signals in a novel context using a conjoint design. We found that codification and moral wrongness most strongly influence rule concepts. This work goes beyond purely legalistic or formalist accounts of rules, showing that people’s intuitions about rule violations are shaped not only by codification but also by descriptive norms, moral wrongness, and perceived legitimacy of enforcement.