🧩 Big picture: People don’t just model choices, they model the generation of options preceding choice. Our findings reveal a folk theory of the two-stage decision process: we intuitively “invert” how minds generate options to infer what others value.
@jsphillips.bsky.social @fierycushman.bsky.social

🔍 Across studies, value inferences followed the principles of diagnosticity and screening off: people made strong inferences only when an option couldn’t be explained another way (like being statistically common).

In the moral domain…
Study 3: People inferred immoral values only when the option was unexplained by context (📊left panel).
Study 4: Value inferences also depended on how easily immoral options came to mind, even when these thoughts were beneficial in context.

Study 1: Inferences about others’ values from what came to mind were sensitive to frequency and context—uncommon, context-inappropriate options were most diagnostic.
Study 2: People also inferred higher value for options generated earlier. 📊Plot shows order predicts inferred liking.

Our findings highlight the need for more research on how social norm messages interact with culture to shape climate attitudes and behavior.
@smconstantino.bsky.social @greggsparkman.bsky.social @joelginn.bsky.social @etedaldi.bsky.social

We examined three common norm appeals: dynamic norms, work-together norms, and correcting pluralistic ignorance. Contrary to expectations, we find little evidence that survey-based social norm appeals to increase climate action are uniformly amplified in tight cultures.