Economics seminar - Despoina Alempaki (University of Warwick)

Moral Narratives Need Norms

We study whether moral narratives, explanations that rationalize honest or dishonest behavior, change what others do, and whether their effectiveness depends on the surrounding normative environment. Across six preregistered experiments with more than 9,000 participants, we expose senders in deception games to peer-generated narratives promoting honesty or justifying dishonesty, while independently varying the strength of norms against lying. We find a robust asymmetry. Positive narratives reduce deception by 13–17 percentage points, but only when norms against lying are strong. Negative narratives, self-serving justifications for dishonesty, are ineffective across all environments. Additional experiments identify normative consensus as the key moderator: narratives reinforce behavior aligned with clear norms but cannot legitimize norm violations. A theoretical framework formalizes this narrative-norm complementarity. Our findings show that narrative-based interventions work by coordinating individuals around existing moral expectations, not by creating new ones.

Last modified: Wed, 20 May 2026 11:01:20 BST