Norm Perception as a Vehicle for Social Change

Peoples own perceptions of what’s normal (not actual reality) drives their behaviour. Changing these perceptions is often more effective than changing attitudes when it comes to pushing social change.

Key Distinctions

• Actual Norms what people really do think
• Perceived Norms what individuals believe what people think
• Attitudes are our evaluations/opinions of something
• There is often a gap between the two, driving how people behave.

Why changing perceived norms is more effective?

1. Norms are easier to change than deep seated attitudes/beliefs
2. Attitudes aren’t an exact correlation with behaviour someone might believe in recycling, but not actually recycle
3. People tend to want to fit into social norms

Sources of Normative Information

These are sources of information that teach a person what the norm is.

1. Individual Behaviour people learn from observing the behaviour of others. This is especially true when observing:
   • Leaders people who hold high positions of power
   • Social referents like celebrities
   • Early Adopters people who try to make something the norm for the first time
2. Group Summary Information like surveys
   • Double-edged sword providing information about a social norm can further reinforces that norm, and peoples behaviour based on it.
     • ie. survey shows that more people steal at a park → causes more people to steal from the park because it’s the norm
3. Institutional Signals from media, laws, authorities, defaults
   • ie. vaping ban on campus makes no vaping a norm

Conditions for Successful Norm Change

1. Identification with the Source people must identify with the population that the norm is referencing
   • Female Princeton students were less effected by “Princeton Student” drinking norms because it was moreso relevant to male students.
2. Believability the new norm must not deviate to much from the current as to make it believable
   • new norm must be plausable, not too extreme
   • want-to-implement norms can be framed as “Changing” instead of “changed”
     • ie. students are beginning to not tip cashiers
3. Alignment with Personal Views there are two scenarios
   • Licensing norm being pushed aligns with a person’s private preferences. Easier to push for
     • ie. information about peers drinking less, aligns with a person’s private preference to not want to drink excessively in the first place
   • Motivating the norm being pushed does not align with a person’s personal view. Alot harder to push
     • ie. LGBT rights in cities where some part of the population does not agree with the norm being pushed
     • can cause backlash
     • requires strong social pressure and enforcement
4. Widely shared information people tend to accept the norm if they know that other people know
   • creates “common knowledge”
   • ie. radio broadcast through public speakerphones vs individually
5. Contextualized descriptive norms instead of just stating information of a norm, causing it to be reinforced, add some context to guide a reader in the right trajectory
   • ie. “more people are starting to steal petrified wood from the park” enforces more people to start stealing because its perceived as ok.
     • instead, “while the rate of petrified wood stealing has risen, most people tend to not steal from the park”
   • There are two ways to do this
     • Dispersion show variations / extremes.
       • “While the rate of drinking has increased, many students dont drink at all”
     • Direction add a velocity
       • “The rate of drinking has gone down from 7 bottles to 5 a day”

Practical Applications

When to use Norm Interventions

• Want-to-enforce behaviour is not publicly visible (ie. no one knows that birth control is a normal thing to take)
• People need social permission / motivation
• Identity of a group is important (ie. we are Canadians, we embrace multi-culturalism)
• There’s a pluralistic ignorance (people private attitudes differ from the perceived norms, even though the private attitude is actually the norm)

When not to use Norm Interventions

• When simple information or channel factors (logistical details like maps, when, where, etc.) would work
  • ie. You’re not going to get more people vaccinated by telling people the norm is to get vaccinated, and not telling them where to get vaccinated
• No cohesive reference group exists
  • ie. whose norm is this?
• Behaviour is extremely personal / private
  • no one wants a norm that intrude’s their private life
  • ie. if an actual behaviour is a case-by-case thing, like divorce or grief
• People strongly oppose the desired behaviour