A new study shows that witnessing others break rules can encourage people to do the same. Researchers led by Dr. Lucas Molleman found that 750 participants often copied bad behavior. If people saw others blatantly break rules, they got more likely to follow suit, sometimes even exceeding those observed violations.

A new study has revealed that witnessing major rule-breaking incidents can actually encourage people to break rules themselves. The research, led by Dr. Lucas Molleman from the University of Amsterdam, seeks to understand how individuals make decisions about rule-breaking in a social context. The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The study involved 750 US-based participants, who were mostly Republicans and Democrats.

They were asked to take part in an online task where they had to choose the square that lit up most intensely from a row of 100 squares, represented by an animated shooting star.

The task was designed such that participants could earn greater rewards for choosing squares further right or smaller rewards for choosing squares further left of the correct one.

The study found that participants were willing to break rules even in their first choices, with 23% opting for squares with the highest reward.

However, their decisions were influenced by others' actions.

If they saw someone following the rules, they were less likely to break them.

But if they witnessed minor beneficial violations (like choosing a square one-third of the way right), it slightly increased their rule-breaking tendencies.

Notably, witnessing others blatantly break rules by choosing a square even further right than the correct one led participants to significantly increase their own rule-breaking.

In some cases, they even exceeded the violations they had observed.

The study found that these effects were stronger when participants shared similar political views with others, indicating that politically aligned individuals are more likely to influence each other.

The researchers used computer simulations to predict how the behavior observed in their experiments would play out in a larger group.

The results showed that a situation could quickly spiral out of control, with a minority of escalating individuals, exceeding the rule violations they observe, potentially causing an entire collective to go haywire.

However, it was also noted that about a third of participants consistently followed the rules even if it didn't yield the highest reward.