The psychology of selectively-enforced 'phantom' rules

There are some rules in life that carry severe consequences. Most of us wouldn't commit fraud, for instance, or steal from a friend. But other rules are both frequently broken and rarely have consequences. You might not think twice about sneaking a look at your phone during a film or even smoking weed in your own home.

A study published in Cognition looks at rules that fall within this category: instances where it's unclear whether punishment will actually happen, or where actual enforcement seems to be somewhat random. It finds that these so-called 'phantom rules' are punishable in a way that is frequently ambiguous and often based on personal factors.

In the first of five experiments, the team recruited participants to take part in a three player sharing game. One player was an 'allocator', who decided how much money would be split between themselves and another player, the 'receiver'. A third player, the 'observer', then decided whether the game was valid or invalid based on the stated rules of the game. This third player was in fact the only real participant; the other two were pre-programmed into the experiment.

Participants were told about three rules to the game. They learned that two of these had normally been enforced, but that the third one – that the allocators were not allowed to give a player a fraction of a point (e.g. 2.5 points) – had rarely been enforced. This was therefore a 'phantom' rule.

Participants then watched a game in which the allocator broke this phantom rule on one of the trials. Some witnessed selfish allocators, who kept the majority of money themselves, while others witnessed fair allocators. At the end, they had to decide whether the game was valid. And participants were much more likely to invalidate the game when allocators were selfish versus when they were generous, even though both allocators had broken the rules. They thus punished rulebreakers based on their perception of their character.

In the second study, the team found that people do distinguish between violations of 'phantom' rules and other kinds of rule violation. Participants saw a list of things that technically break the law but often go unpunished, such as jaywalking, and social norm violations such as talking during a film or telling a racist joke. They were more likely to categorise phantom rule violations as illegal than social norm violations, and also saw them as more common, less morally acceptable, more commonly enforced, and more deserving of punishment. Phantom rules are thus seen as both codified in law and frequently broken.

In a further study, phantom rule violations were seen as less morally reprehensible, and the enforcement of these rules less legitimate, compared to prototypical illegal acts such as exposing oneself in public or running a red light. This suggests that not only do people frequently break phantom rules, but they also see them as less serious than other types of illegal acts.

Finally, participants read six vignettes paired with a face, describing the person committing a social norm violation such as talking during a movie and a phantom rule violation such as biking on the sidewalk, or a phantom rule violation alone. Participants then indicated how punishable they felt the violation was, how much the legal system should be involved, how deserving of blame the person was, and whether or not the violation reflected a bad character. Participants were more likely to punish rule breakers when a phantom rule violation occurred alongside a social norm violation, as if the phantom rule violation was a convenient excuse for punishing the character, when they really wanted to punish them for the social norm violation.

Overall, the studies suggest that while phantom rules are explicitly codified in law, they are frequently violated, rarely enforced, and often seen as less morally wrong than other forms of norm violations. Yet our desire to mete out punishment for such violations can depend on how we see others. Exploring who exactly is punished for what, especially in the real world, could provide further insight on rule violation and punishment. The team notes that people of colour are more likely to be punished for phantom rule violations like jaywalking or possessing marijuana; other marginalised groups may also be subject to more punishment than others.