Increasing the impact of social norms: moderators

Moderators: factors that determine the strength of the impact.

Various moderators:

1. Reference group size
2. Presence of others
3. Similarity reference group (VS outgroup effect)
4. Unanimous referent group
5. Reference group: experts, vips
6. Prior (public) commitments
7. Low self-esteem
8. Prohibition signs

• Number of people making up the referent group (the more people do it, the easier you are going to do it as well).
  • E.g. # or % of persons staring at spot in the sky (Milgram, Bickman, and Berkowitz, 1969)
    • 1 pers looking made 4% stopped looking
    • 5 pers looking made 8% stopped looking
    • 15 pers looking made 40% stopped looking
• The presence of others, being watched. Or the impression that others are present to watch you.
• Who are in that reference group? The more similar you think the group is, the more influence it has on your behavior.
  
  • What is the effect when the group is people you don’t want to belong to (outgroup)? You don’t copy their behavior.  
  • Trainstation in Berlin where it is not allowed to smoke. Seeing people from your ingroup smoke (casual clothes), from your outgroup (gothic clothes), no people smoking.
  • 
  • If there are experts in the reference group that will influence people more.
  • 

Poster on bikes. Are people going to take it home or throwing it on the ground?

When the environment is littered with the sign. Its makes people litter ever more because the sign makes clear that there is a difference between the descriptive norm and the social norm.

Social proof spreading effects

Broken Windows Theory

• New York, bratton
  • New York was dangerous place in the late 90’s. If you have a neighborhood with broken windows and graffiti on the wall, the neighborhood will only go down even further. Can’t we turn it the other way around? They removed all the graffiti and made the windows. The city was indeed becoming better. But at the same time there were other drugs introduced in New York, and not only crack as before.
• Disorder
• Theory / mechanism

Goal framing theory

• Goals:
  • Normative (appropriately): focus on other people (not harming them; complying to social norms)
  • Gain (guard/improv, resources): future orientation (have to go to college)
  • Hedonic (feel good): what you feel right now (shitty because of college)
• Conflict, weaking of one- other goals to the fore
• The goal to act appropriately is weakened when people observe that others did not pursue the goal to act appropriately.
• We have various glasses to look at the world. We have a selective memory and every person has a different frame of reference.

Cross-norm inhibition effect

• When a(n) (injunctive) norm violation becomes common it inhibits the influence of other injunctive norms on behavior
• Tested on various norms/combinations of norms
• If you see norms are violated, you are more triggered to violate another norm: policeman would say it is an indicator that you wont get a ticket if you violate the rule. But it is not only this: example of lost letter.

Conclusion

• As a certain norm/rule violating behavior becomes more common, it will negatively influence conformity to other norms and rules
• General effect
• Alternative explanations

What really works?

• Observing care/resect for injunctive norms and rules
• ‘Cross-norm reinforcement effect’

Cross-norm reinforcement effect

Seeing someone embracing a norm, acting in line with the goal, had a positive effect on you complying to this rule, and other rules. So good is spreading through the society.

Picking up a bicycle in the ally:

If you see someone from the outgroup complaining the rule you wouldn’t expect to, it would be an indicator how important the rule is. If you see an gothic picking up litter, it can be a strong indicator for the importance.

Suggestions / summary

• Descriptive norm inline: remove signs of norm violating behavior
• Making norm salient (sign use)
• Social context
• Group identity and similarity
• Cross-norm/spreading effects
• Intrinsic motivation
• One person can make a difference