Rigor and Relevance: How Injunctive Norms and Enforcement Shift Descriptive Norms in Science

We introduce the Norms for Behavior Change model (NBC) to explain how injunctive norms coupled with enforcement promote community-level behavior change. We examine the NBC model in the context of open science. In a pilot study, we identify how actual injunctive norms about open science are particularly weak in OB because the majority of OB journals do not have explicit requirements for open science. In Study 1, we find that OB faculty perceive injunctive and descriptive norms of publishing as less likely to include open science practices compared to JDM faculty. In Study 2, we demonstrate that the actual descriptive norms of publishing are less likely to adhere to open science practices in OB journals than psychology journals. In Study 3, we analyze an archival data set of preregistrations on aspredicted.org, and find that actual descriptive norms of open science are more likely to be adopted by experimentalists than non-experimentalists.