Summary: A Stanford study finds that highlighting how social norms are changing — not just what people currently do — makes individuals more likely to adopt new, sustainable behaviors.
Source: Stanford
Convincing people to adopt new or uncommon behaviors—whether for the environment, personal health, or other important causes—can be difficult because prevailing social norms strongly reinforce existing habits.
Researchers at Stanford suggest a small but powerful shift in how messages are framed: emphasize that norms are changing. In research published Sept. 29 in Psychological Science, the team shows that communicating dynamic norms — information about how other people’s behavior is changing over time — increases people’s willingness to change their own behavior.
“From a psychological perspective,” said Gregg Sparkman, a doctoral student in psychology at Stanford and the study’s lead author, “we want to understand how social change happens. What leads people to overturn a status quo?”
Sparkman and senior author Gregory M. Walton note that many changes we now take for granted started as minority practices that gradually became widespread. For example, wearing seat belts and the decline of smoking in public once faced social resistance but eventually became the norm. The researchers asked what kinds of social signals help people make similar transitions today.
Dynamic norms versus static norms
Prior work has emphasized static norms — descriptions of how most people currently behave. Sparkman and Walton focused instead on dynamic norms: messages that highlight trends in behavior, showing that some people are shifting toward a new practice. Their hypothesis was that if people learn others are changing, they may infer that change is feasible and socially meaningful, which can motivate their own behavior change.
The research included five experiments, with several focusing on meat consumption — a highly visible, routine behavior that has significant environmental impacts. In one online experiment, participants read one of two short statements about meat consumption. The static statement described how some Americans currently try to eat less meat; the dynamic statement emphasized that some Americans are starting to eat less meat. Participants exposed to the dynamic framing reported greater interest in reducing their own meat consumption and expected the trend to continue into the future, a perception that made them more willing to conform to the anticipated norm.
In a field experiment at a Stanford campus café, signs presented to people standing in line either noted that some people “limit how much meat they eat” (static) or that some people “are starting to limit how much meat they eat” (dynamic). Patrons who saw the dynamic message were twice as likely to choose a meatless lunch compared with those who saw the static message (34 percent versus 17 percent), demonstrating that even brief exposure to a dynamic norm can influence real-world choices.
Subtle messages, meaningful impact
Importantly, participants were not asked to change or given arguments about the benefits of changing. The effect came from simply learning that others were changing. “We didn’t tell people to stop or reduce meat,” Walton said. “They were only given information about change.”
The team also tested dynamic messaging in a natural household context during California’s recent drought. Laundry-room signs in graduate student residences either displayed a static conservation message (“Most Stanford residents use full loads — help Stanford conserve water”) or a dynamic message (“Stanford residents are changing: now most use full loads — help Stanford conserve water”). Over three weeks, buildings with no signs showed no change. Buildings with the static message reduced laundry loads by about 10 percent, while buildings with the dynamic message reduced loads by nearly 30 percent, indicating a substantially stronger effect when people learned others were shifting their behavior.
These results suggest that dynamic norms can motivate behavior change even when the desired action is counter to an entrenched habit. The underlying mechanisms identified by the authors include preconformity — people’s anticipation that the behavior will become more common in the future — and the inference that reducing the target behavior matters to others.
The researchers plan to explore whether dynamic norm messaging can be applied to other sustainability efforts, such as reducing electricity use, and to social policy goals, including efforts to close the gender wage gap. “Dynamic norms may play a large role in social change,” Sparkman said. “Learning that others are changing can set off psychological processes that make change seem possible, important and likely — which in turn encourages more people to change, making that future norm a reality.”
Source: Milenko Martinovich — Stanford
Image source: Image adapted from the Stanford news release (as noted in the original report).
Original research: “Dynamic Norms Promote Sustainable Behavior, Even if It Is Counternormative” by Gregg Sparkman and Gregory M. Walton, Psychological Science, published online September 29, 2017. DOI: 10.1177/0956797617719950.
Stanford. “Changing Behaviors May Be Easier When People See Norms Changing.” NeuroscienceNews, October 6, 2017. (Adapted summary of the Stanford release and associated research article.)
Abstract (summary)
The researchers investigated whether people conform not only to current norms but also to dynamic norms that describe how others’ behavior is changing. Across three online experiments and two field studies, dynamic norms increased interest in reducing meat consumption and doubled meatless orders in a campus café, despite prevailing static norms favoring meat consumption. Mediating psychological factors included anticipation that reduced meat eating will become more common and the inference that cutting meat matters to others. In a field test during drought conditions, a positive dynamic norm combined with a conservation message led to a larger reduction in laundry loads and water use than a static norm. These findings indicate dynamic norms can promote sustainable behavior, even when the desired behavior runs counter to existing norms.