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Description: Data and analysis code for: Gaechter, Molleman and Nosenzo: "Why people follow rules". ABSTRACT. Why people conform with rules, most importantly laws and social norms, is controversial across the human sciences. Particularly disputed is the importance of people’s intrinsic respect for rules, if one accounts for extrinsic incentives, other-regarding motives, and for the possibility that people want to conform with social expectations. Here, we develop a unifying experimental framework to study the basic psychology of rule-following. In our baseline experiments, participants are asked to follow an arbitrary rule devoid of moral content, and they act alone and anonymously. Following the rule implies a net loss, and a violation hurts no-one. Nevertheless, between 55 and 70 percent of people followed the rule. We then show that even an arbitrary rule without social consequences engenders strong social expectations: people view rule-conformity as socially appropriate and expect others to conform. We causally manipulate social expectations and find that rule-breaking is contagious and lowers the rule’s normative appeal. Rule-following rates never drop below 40%, which is consistent with unconditional respect for rules. Further experiments reveal that other-regarding concerns and extrinsic incentives increase rule-following, but unconditional rule-following and social expectations alone explain most of it. Our results demonstrate that people’s respect for rules, and their engendered social expectations, are the basic elements of people’s rule psychology that explain why people conform with laws and social norms. Other-regarding concerns and social sanctions can “piggyback” on the basic rule psychology to further bolster rule-following.