Social Norms

Question 1

Cooperative Behaviour Burnham & Hare (2007) - eyes

Answer 1

• Burnham & Hare (2007) – lab experiment – public goods game – given ten tokens to allocate between a public and a private accounts, tokens in the private account remained with the player, while those allocated to the group were doubled and divided up equally among four players in a group, tokens converted to cash – half of the participants watched by images of a robot (Kismet) on computer screen – constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes – participants who are ‘watched’ by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than participants in the same setting without Kismet do
o Could be argued subjects contribute more in an effort to please the experimenter – demand characteristics – however, control condition without robot where they knew their decisions were being observed by the experimenter did not increase contribution to public goods game
o Further research – fMRI to investigate brain function during the presentation of an eye stimulus

Question 2

Cooperative Behaviour Fehrcamp; Fischbacher (2004) – review –

Answer 2

review

several studies indicating that the addition of sanctioning opportunities and the associated actual sanctioning behaviour has a powerful impact on cooperation rates in these experiment

– anonymous public goods experiment – all group members are informed about everyone else’s contribution (without revealing personal identities) upon which everybody can punish everybody else in the group – cooperation decreases if the participants first conduct an experiment without the opportunity to punish – however, if same subjects subsequently have the opportunity to punish, cooperation flourishes – if the punishment opportunity come first, cooperation flourishes and then breaks down after its removal

– the punishment opportunity generates a belief that the other group members will cooperate at high levels, and this belief induces the conditional co-operators to cooperate voluntarily at high levels

100% cooperation of all participant’s is typically achieved in the final trials if punishment option is maintained –> shows that social change can be faciliated if willingness to cooperate increases

Question 3

Normative Influence - Perkins ( 2010 )

Answer 3

project found that resident of the state did overestimate the prevalence of drinking and driving – campaign using TV, radio and print to market accurate norms (e.g. 4 out of 5 of us don’t drink and drive) – campaign was successful in reducing norm misperception and reported prevalence of drink driving – the intervention increased the number of residents by 16% willing to support reducing the blood alcohol content legal limit for drinking to 0.08, a measure that is likely to reduce drinking-related deaths and injuries

Question 4

Normative Influence

Haggag and Paci (2014) - tipping

Answer 4

when new norms are believable of group opinions and behaviour – passengers in a taxi were more likely to refrain altogether from tipping when the default amounts for tips on the credit card screen were a higher range (20%, 25%, 30%) compared to a lower range (15%, 20%, 25%), presumably because they recognised the extremity of the suggested tips compared to their own understanding of normative tipping amounts
o Another way to present normative information as plausible is to present the norm as beginning to change, or experiencing momentum in a particular direction
o Further research could helpfully explore the psychology of judging distance between a current norm and a change in that norm

Question 5

Reference Group - Paluck 2009

Answer 5

radio soap operas in Rwanda Congo have aimed to reduce conflict by depicting likeable characters engaging in behaviours such as starting a youth coalition for peace and developing friendships across group boundaries – in a field experiment, one year of randomly assigned exposure to a reconciliation-themed radio soap opera, relative to a control soap opera about health, changed listeners’ perceived norms and behaviours with respect to issues such as open dissent and cooperation

Question 6

Reference Group

Gerber, Green & Larimer (2008) - voting behaviour

Answer 6

– field experiment on voter turnout on 180,002 households in Michigan – told their votes would either be available to the public and to varying degrees of closeness – the condition where they were told it would be revealed to their neighbours whether they voted or not had the greatest impact – increased voting by 8% - shows how social norms have a large influence

more influential than when receiving message about being civic duty

Question 7

Reference Group- Goldstein et al 2008

Answer 7

– Recycling towels in hotels using social norm feedback – 2 field experiments examined the effectiveness of signs requesting hotel guests’ participation in an environmental conservation program – appeals employing descriptive norms (e.g. ‘the majority of guests reuse their towels’) proved superior to a traditional appeal widely used by hotels that focused solely on environmental protection – normative appeals were most effective when describing group behaviour that occurred in the setting that most closely matched individuals’ immediate situational circumstances (e.g. ‘the majority of guests in this room reuse their towels’) – this is known as provincial norms

Question 8

Widely shared - Arias (2014)

Answer 8

• Arias (2014) – field experiment in Mexico – manipulated whether a radio soap opera relaying rejection of violence against women was transmitted to participants individually (CD-ROM) or socially (group meeting or community loudspeaker) – the radio program strengthened perceptions of social norms rejecting violence against women only when the method of delivery was social, not when it was individual – knowing others are receiving the same content is in itself sufficient to change attitudes and norms, even if there is no direct social interaction with fellow recipients (as in a group meeting vs loudspeaker)

Question 9

Widely shared - paluck and Shepard 2012

Answer 9

– field experiment in an American high school – used social network analysis to select students who spent time with the most people – trained to model anti-harassment behaviours during the rest of the school year e.g. speaking at a school assembly, talk to peers about ways to report harassment, sell wristbands with an anti-harassment message – analyses of all students’ reported norms and behaviours at the end of the year demonstrated that students with more social network ties to the anti-harassment social references were more likely to perceive that harassment was not considered desirable by other students at their school, and school records showed they were less likely to be disciplined for peer conflict

Question 10

Boomerang effect

Answer 10

social norms going against prosocial behaviour- but effect can be mediated

Schultz et al 2007- 290 Californian households with visible utility meters – researchers provided these households with various types of normative information and messages over a two-week period and observed the effect on utility usage – in the comparative information condition, participants received information indicating where they stood (higher than average vs lower than average) in energy usage compared to their neighbours – those who learned that they used more energy than most of their neighbours reduced their energy usage but those who learned that they used less energy increased their energy usage, unless their feedback was accompanied by a smiley-face and the word ‘good’

Question 11

Ethics of Norms

Answer 11

• Reisch & Sunstein (2016) – survey over 6 European countries (1000 participants from each, 2000 from UK) – 15 different scenarios for nudging (e.g. calorie labels, sweet-free cashier zones, requiring movie theatres to have adverts against smoking and overeating, requiring one meat-free day in public canteens), most people supportive of nudging e.g. average of 79.5% agree with calories labels and 78.7% agreeing with requiring industry to put warning labels on food with high salt content – shows that most people are happy to be nudged for good

Question 12

Norm internalisation- van der linden 2013 - dutch

Answer 12

• Van der Linden (2013) – goal was to reduce Dutch students’ bottled water use, which averaged about 10 bottles per month – participants either received descriptive norm information that suggested most students were trying to reduce their bottled water usage, a persuasive message that emphasises the environmental costs of bottled water or both descriptive norm information and a persuasive message – only a decrease in behavioural intentions when two pieces of information were combined

Question 13

Norm internalisation

Van der Linden 2012

Answer 13

• Van der Linden (2017) – viral altruism – the altruistic act of one individual directly inspires another, spreading rapidly like a contagion across a network of interconnected individuals – 2014 ALS Ice Bucket Challenge – over 28 million people joined the challenge and raised public awareness of ALS – success has not been replicated – only raised 0.9% in 2015 of what it raised in 2014 – although ALS campaign successfully raised a commendable amount of one-off donations, it is questionable whether the campaign did anything to substantially improve people’s understanding of serious neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS
o Many viral campaigns draw their success from the psychology of consensus – once a social tipping point has been reached (e.g. one million views), the appeal of the social consensus itself becomes a self-perpetuating mechanism – problematic as it elicits relatively superficial engagement with the cause and the exponential increase in social momentum is unlikely to be sustained
o Increasing the longevity of viral altruism may therefore require more meaningful engagement with a social cause, and paradoxically, slowing the viral nature of the campaign

Question 14

Facebook organ donor initative

Answer 14

• Facebook organ donor initiative – allows Facebook users to officially register and declare themselves an organ donor as part of their online profile – resulted in nearly 40,000 new online registrations in just two weeks – visibly shared new online registrations to all friends in an individual’s network, encouraging social conformity – elicited more than 60% of its total online registrations in the first two days, after which the number of new sign-ups decayed quickly

Question 15

Martin and Randal 2008

Answer 15

social norm promoting prosocial behaviour

When charity box has already some money in it, more people will donate than if it’s empty

Question 16

Perceived presence of another individual as a significant influencer on behaviour

Andreoni and Petri

Answer 16

Particiapnts contributed more to the public good in the game when their decisions were associated with them compared to when their decisions remained anonymous

Question 17

Broken Window

Answer 17

The theory suggests that in an urban environment, visible signs of anti-social and criminal behaviour, such as vandalism and public drinking, encourages further crime and disorder that are potentially more serious, such as murder and arson

- while research on the broken windows theory is largely correlational – we cannot establish causality between visual signs of disorder and petty criminal behaviour – it reinforces the idea that the behaviours of other individuals, believed to be significant in the context of group membership, significantly influence an individual’s likelihood of complying with social norms, particularly when norms are violated by a large proportion of the group.

Question 18

Tankard and Paluck 2017 - Supreme Court Same sex marriage attitude norm link

Answer 18

studied the influence of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favour of same-sex marriage on social norms and behaviour.

five-wave longitudinal time-series study using a sample of 1,063 people

findings replicated in between subject experiment

researchers assessed participant’s perceived social norms and attitudes before and after the Supreme Court ruling.

Results demonstrated:

- an increase in perceived social norms supporting same-sex marriage after the ruling 
- no change in personal attitudes. 
- Influence on institution was with social norms but not with attitudes 

As such, the question of whether social norms or attitudes are more influential in guiding behaviour is raised – a topic that has previously sparked conflict in social psychology.

Question 19

Miller and Prentice

• interventions

Answer 19

• Providing individuals with information about the behaviour and attitude of others socially relevant
  
  • Single factual message document high incidence of target behaviours : alcohol is consumed less regularly as students think ( Miller and Prentice , 2016 )
  • Personalised normative feedback: rather than targething the group as a whole, targets individuals themselves by providing them with information about their own behaviours as well as the behaviours of their peers : how much alcohol they consume in a week and how much they think their peers consume in a week –> provided on the discrepanices about their estimates of the social norm and the acutal norm
    ○ Agostinelli, Brown and Miller (1995) receiving such feedback increased the lowering of the non-normative behaviour

individuals with information about the behaviour and attitudes of others considered part of the same group is influential in changing the perception of the social norm and as a result is highly influential in changing the associated social behaviour

Question 20

Keizer

Answer 20

4 studies on if people’s perceptions of normative bahviour ( through the environmental norm ) are changed they will adopt new behavioural repertoires

Different types of crime settings ( litter/ graffiti present )

Presriptive norm ( no grafiti ) violated

Vandalism yes –> 69 % prepared to litter in comparison to 33 % in a clean environment

Clean environment 13 % stole money from a mailbox vs 27 % in a disordered environmen t

–> reallignment of norm possible if presented with real norm ( individuals often have a misperception of the real norm ) –> consensus was shifted ( not just conformity and copying others )

cross-norm inhibition effect wherein one norm violation fosters violations of other norms

–> injunctive anti-disorder norm violated

–> presentation of norms could help promotion of positive behaviours

Question 21

What are social norms

Answer 21

i. Norms are beliefs about what others do and think we should do (sometimes known as social expectations).
ii. These “others” must be socially relevant (e.g. reference groups) and exert pressure (social influence).
iii. Social norms are upheld through social approval/disapproval.
iv. People will follow norms to avoid social sanctions: negative social judgement, social aggression, exclusion from the group.
v. Norms influence and guide behaviours.

Question 22

What are social dilemnas

Answer 22

i. Situations where each individual receives a higher pay off for a socially defecting choice than for a socially cooperative choice.
ii. However, all individuals in society are better off if all cooperate than if all defect (Dawes, 1980).
iii. Examples of social dilemmas: Global climate change, Voting, Charitable giving.

Question 23

Why do norms exist

Answer 23

i. Social norms regulate and control human social behaviour. Can help facilitate large-scale cooperation and coordination of beliefs and behaviour
ii. Norms can maintain law and order without the use of force. They help mitigate conflict.
iii. Norms represent social facts, so they help establish consensus.
iv. Social norms can promote group cohesion, social harmony, and social integration.
v. Norms can be used as social heuristics. Following norms is often “adaptive” because it reduces the cost of individual learning, allowing much of human social behaviour to become

Question 24

prescriptive norms

Answer 24

told how to behave 
o	normative influence
o	what other ought to be doing
o	how people should be behaving 
o	does not necessarily lead to internalization but conformity due to fear of

Question 25

descriptive norms

Answer 25

observe how others behave

o what others are doing
o incidence rate of behavior
o higher rate of internalization
o the extent to which we accept information from others as evidence about reality

Question 26

consensus

Answer 26

1) Describes state of normative group agreement –> not general statement
2) More fundamental normative process
3) Used to create and change social norms
Basis of evolution of human cooperation ]

Question 27

example when consensus promotes social behaviour

Answer 27

Eg. Hotel towel example , the statements were not about general behaviour but tied to a particular group : the hotel partnered with the its guests . Consensus as efforts should be taken to preserrve out environment and minimise energy spending where possible –> consensus has been made salient

Question 28

example when consensus undermines social behaviour

Answer 28

Keizer - increase in prevalence of norm violating behaviour leads to a negative influence on consensus to abide by other norms and rules

Question 29

conformity

Answer 29

Keizer - increase in prevalence of norm violating behaviour leads to a negative influence on consensus to abide by other norms and rules

Question 30

example conformity promoting social behaviour

Answer 30

Eg hotel towel example : the more proximate the rule is , the more people conformed

Viral altruism:
- superficial in nature , a powerful tool to engage individuals to contribute to those who need it by making the idea of getting involved seem appealing given that the majority appeared to already be involved.
It seems there is a consensus agreement that charity is good, but donations raised through the medium of viral altruism, in this particular case, appear to create a momentum that is not sustainable as suggested by the fact that future attempts to replicate the challenge and raise the same sort of money in later years were significantly less successful

Question 31

example conformity promoting social behaviour

Answer 31

Eg hotel towel example : the more proximate the rule is , the more people conformed

Viral altruism:
- superficial in nature , a powerful tool to engage individuals to contribute to those who need it by making the idea of getting involved seem appealing given that the majority appeared to already be involved.
It seems there is a consensus agreement that charity is good, but donations raised through the medium of viral altruism, in this particular case, appear to create a momentum that is not sustainable as suggested by the fact that future attempts to replicate the challenge and raise the same sort of money in later years were significantly less successful

Question 32

examples of making norms salient to promote human cooperation

Answer 32

hotel towels
democracy voting
charity

Question 33

normative processes promoting human coopeartion

Answer 33

being observed

viral altruism

make norm salient so people conform

consensus and conformity

the presence of others

the presence of punishments

institutional support for social norms

Question 34

When can norms influence behaviour

Answer 34

focus theory of normative conduct

aligning injunctive and descriptive norms

when the perceived norm and actual norm lign up

Question 35

social change can be facilitated by

Answer 35

social norm interventions

presence of others

presence of punishments

focus theory of normative conduct

social interventions

Question 36

normative processes undermining human cooperation

Answer 36

broken window effect + consensus about presciptive norm

bystander effect

boomerang effect

conformity

Question 37

A focus theory of normative conduct

Answer 37

1) Social norms only influence behavior directly when they are focal in attention and salient in consciousness for the targeted behavior –> basic socio-cognitive precesses
2) Activating descriptive vs prescriptive ( injunctive norms produces significantly different behavioural responses
3) Aligning descriptive and prescriptive norms maximizes social cooperation across the greatest number of situations and populations

Question 38

Norm internalisation

time as a component

Answer 38

• Ayres et al (2013) – Opower (publicly held company that partners with utilities around the world to promote energy efficiency) – mailing home energy reports to approximately 35,000 households within the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and 50,000 households as a control group – households that received energy reports for six months consumed 2.5% less electricity than control households – subsequent analysis of follow-up data showed that the difference in energy consumption between treatment and control groups persisted for more than one year

Question 39

The wisdom of the crowd

Answer 39

diversity of opninion

independence

decentralization

aggregation

Question 40

Kellgran Reno Ciadini study 1

Answer 40

o Study 1 – manipulated participants’ level of arousal in the presence of dominant normative information – made half the participants walk up and down the stairs a number of times to induce physiological arousal – stairwell was pre-littered for all participants (296 psychology students) – normative issues made focal by having participants read a short diary in which a roommate violates a norm – stairs did increase arousal – when focus was present, no significant trend

Question 41

study 2 reno kellgren cialdini

Answer 41

o Study 2 – 149 visitors to a public hospital – exposed some participants to an individual who picked up a piece of litter (high norm focus) – perceived social disapproval) – other participants exposed to an individual who simply walked past (low norm focus) – the high norm-focus/two hand-bill condition produced less littering (9.4%) than either the low norm-focus/two hand-bill condition (42.5%) or the high norm-focus/one hand-bill condition (25.6%) – making an injunctive social norm salient may be a particularly effective device for suppressing highly counter-normative actions

Question 42

study 3 reno, kellgren, cialdini

Answer 42

Study 3 – 107 psychology students – used stairwell setting of study 1 – after measuring participants’ personal norms against littering (10 item questionnaire), researchers exposed them to a closed circuit TV picture of themselves (internal focus) or of geometric shapes (external focus) and later gave them the opportunity to litter in a private setting – less littering occurred among participant who were internally focused and among participant who held strong antilittering personal norms – data indicate that mere possession of a personal norm does not lead routinely to norm-based action. Rather, internal or external focus of attention importantly moderates the degree to which the personal norm is likely to guide such action