National Social Norms Institute

Articles by Year - 2008

Goldstein, Noah J.; Cialdini, Robert B; and Vladas Griskevicius. (2008). A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35. go to summary

Hughes, Clarissa; Julian, Roberta; Richman, Matthew; Mason, Ron; and Long, Gillian. (2008). "Harnessing the Power of Perception: Reducing Alcohol-Related Harm among Rural Teenagers." Youth Studies Australia, 27, 2, 26-35. go to summary

Lewis, Melissa A.; Neighbors, Clayton; Lee, Christine M.; and Oster-Aaland, Laura. (2008). 21st Birthday Celebratory Drinking: Evaluation of a Personalized Normative Feedback Card Intervention. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 22, 2, 176-185. go to summary

Nolan, Jessica M.; Schultz, P. Wesley; Cialdini, Robert B.; Goldstein, Noah J.; and Griskevicius, Vladas. (2008). Normative Social Influence is Underdetected. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 913-923. go to summary

Turner, James; Perkins, H. Wesley; and Bauerle, Jennifer. (2008). “Declining Negative Consequences Related to Alcohol Misuse Among Students Exposed to a Social Norms Marketing Intervention on a College Campus.” Journal of American College Health, 57, 1, 85-93. go to summary

Objective:
This study investigated whether using an appeal that conveys the descriptive norm for participation in hotel conservation programs would be more effective at encouraging towel reuse than the current industry standard appeal. It also examined how hotel guests’ conformity to a descriptive norm varied related to the type of reference group tied to that norm. The authors explored whether the norm of hotel guests’ immediate surroundings (provincial norm) motivated conformity to the norm to a greater extent than the norm of guests’ less immediate surroundings (global norm).
Method:
For the first experiment, the authors created two signs soliciting participation in the towel reuse program of a mid-sized, mid-priced hotel that was part of a well-known national hotel chain. The signs were positioned on washroom towel racks and the hotel’s room attendants were responsible for collecting the participation data. One message, which was designed to reflect the industry standard approach, focused on the importance of environment protection but provided no explicit descriptive norm. A second message conveyed the descriptive norm, informing guests that the majority of other guests do, in fact, participate in the program at least once during their stay. The authors collected data on 1,058 instances of potential towel reuse in 190 rooms over an 80-day span. Each of the 190 hotel rooms was randomly assigned to one of the two different messages. Guests were not aware that they were participants in the study.
For the second experiment, the authors created five different towel reuse signs soliciting the participation of guests at the same hotel that was used in the first experiment. One sign was the standard environmental sign from experiment one, which focused on the importance of environment protection but provided no explicit descriptive norm. All four of the other messages communicated the descriptive norm (In a previous study, approximately 75% of the people who had been asked to participate in these programs did so) but varied the reference group identity. One of the signs conveyed that these norms were characteristic of other hotel guests (global norm); whereas another conveyed that these norms were characteristic of other hotel guests who had stayed in the guests’ particular rooms (provincial norm). The remaining two signs conveyed norms of reference groups that are considered to be important and personally meaningful to people’s social identities (the reference group identity of “citizen” and “gender”). The authors collected data on 1,595 instances of potential towel reuse in 190 rooms over a 53-day span. Once again, the guests were not aware that they were participants in a study and each of the hotel rooms was randomly assigned to one of the five different messages. The authors also polled a separate group of 53 participants to examine the extent to which each of their appeals activated the intended social identities and the degree to which participants felt that each of these social identities was personally meaningful to them.
Results:
Data were recorded only for guests who stayed a minimum of two nights and only the first day of participation was analyzed. For the first experiment, the researchers used a chi-square test to reveal that the descriptive norm condition yielded a significantly higher towel reuse rate (44.1%) than the environmental protection condition (35.1%). The compliance rate observed is likely an underestimation of the number of individuals who recycle their towels at least once during their stay. This is a result of only examining towel reuse data for the participants’ first eligible day and using conservative standards for counting compliance. A chi-square test for the overall differences among the towel reuse rates for the five conditions yielded a significant difference among the groups. A planned comparison revealed that all four descriptive norm messages combined (44.5%) fared significantly better than the standard environmental message (37.2%). By merely informing hotel guests that other guests generally reused their towels significantly increased towel reuse compared to focusing guests on the importance of environmental protection. An additional planned comparison revealed that the same room identity descriptive norm condition yielded a significantly higher towel reuse rate (49.3%) than the other three descriptive norm conditions combined (42.8%). This means that even though the provincial norm for the frequency of guests’ towel reuse in a particular hotel room is not any more diagnostic of effective or approved behavior than the other norms, this condition produced the highest level of towel reuse. Participation rates were highest for the reference group that participants felt was the least personally meaningful to them but the most physically proximate. The other three descriptive norm conditions— the citizen identity descriptive norm (43.5%), the gender identity descriptive norm (40.9%), and the guest identity descriptive norm (44.0%)—did not differ from one another.
Conclusions:
Appeals employing descriptive norms proved superior to a traditional appeal widely used by hotels that focused solely on environmental protection. Normative appeals were most effective when describing group behavior that occurred in the setting that most closely matched individuals’ immediate situational circumstances (provincial norms).
Implications for the Field:
Normative social identity research has previously focused almost exclusively on the importance of commonalities among personal, rather than contextual, characteristics of individuals and the groups whose behaviors they observe. The research has largely failed to address the role of situational similarities in norm adherence. The results of the two field experiments demonstrated the power of descriptive and provincial norms to motivate others to engage in environmental conservation. The superiority of the descriptive norm messages relative to the industry standard, which experiment 2 showed activated guests’ identities as environmentally concerned individuals but provided no explicit descriptive norm, suggests that making a meaningful social identity salient without providing descriptive normative information is not an optimal approach. Provincial norms may be particularly influential in that it is typically beneficial for individuals to follow the norms that most closely match one’s immediate settings, situations, and circumstances.

Hughes, Clarissa; Julian, Roberta; Richman, Matthew; Mason, Ron; and Long, Gillian. (2008). Harnessing the Power of Perception: Reducing Alcohol-Related Harm among Rural Teenagers. Youth Studies Australia, 27, 2, 26-35. return to list

Objective:
This study examined the preliminary findings of the Social Norms Analysis Project (SNAP), a cross-sectoral partnership of organizations that worked together to undertake the first Australian trial of a social norms campaign to reduce risky drinking and alcohol-related harm among high school youth in four rural communities in Tasmania. Tasmania exhibits some concerning trends with respect to alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm, including the largest percentage increase in alcohol-related hospitalizations between 1993 and1994 and 2000 to 2001. By the age of 14, around 90% of the Australian population has tried alcohol (White and Haymen, 2004). Previous research has indicated that youth in rural areas consume alcohol at higher levels than their metropolitan counterparts, thereby placing themselves at increased risk of “being involved in social disorder as victims or perpetrators, or both” (Williams, 1999).
Method:
The two-year trial included rural municipalities that were selected for having a “sense of community” and a focus on youth and/or problematic alcohol consumption. The municipalities also had an active local council; no more than two public high schools servicing the community; and a history of successful partnerships with the university, law enforcement agencies, and all three tiers of government. Student data was collected from students in years 7-10 at the four trial schools using a self-administered anonymous survey in mid-2006 (baseline) and twice in 2007. A total of 509 surveys from the four intervention schools were completed and analyzed. The analyses focused on the relationship between the students’ own alcohol-related attitudes and behaviors and their perceptions of others’ alcohol-related attitudes and behaviors and the student’s own experience of alcohol-related consumption and harms.
Results:
The baseline survey results demonstrate the existence of considerable misperception among the target groups at all four trial sites across a range of areas. Students underestimated the proportion of those who drank once a month or less and overestimated the proportion drinking once or twice a week or more. Similar misperceptions were observed in relation to drunkenness. As the perceived frequency of others getting drunk increased, so too did the frequency of oneself getting drunk. Infrequent drunkenness among others was significantly underestimated and frequent drunkenness was substantially overestimated. In addition, there was a strong relationship between perceived rates and self-reported rates of drinking, suggesting that students tend to drink at around the same rate as they perceive their friends to drink.
Conclusions:
The baseline SNAP results suggest that the teenagers involved in the trial (like adolescents and young adults in the United States and elsewhere) have inaccurate notions of what constitutes “normal behavior” in relation to alcohol. The authors conclude that teens’ drinking behaviors may not be driven so much by a need for peer approval or to be accepted by a group, but rather by “what is perceived of as normal behavior among one’s close friends” (Beck and Treiman, 1996).
Implications for the Field:
The preliminary findings resonate with social norms research undertaken in the United States and elsewhere in that “students tend to think that their peers are, on average, more permissive in personal drinking attitudes than is the case, and likewise that peers consume more frequently and more heavily, on average, than is really the norm” (Perkins, 2002).

LaBrie, Joseph W.; Huchting, Karen; Tawalbeh, Summer; Pedersen, Eric R.; Thompson, Alysha D.; Shelesky, Kristin; Larimer, Mary; and Neighbors, Clayton (2008). “A Randomized Motivational Enhancement Prevention Group Reduces Drinking and Alcohol Consequences in First-Year College Women”. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 22, 1, 149-155. return to list

Objective:
The study tested a group motivational enhancement approach and weekly Web-based follow-up data collection to assess the prevention of heavy drinking among first year college women.
Method:
A sample of 261 female students enrolled in the study and completed an initial questionnaire. The questionnaire assessed demographic questions, including age, ethnicity, and family income, and was also a baseline measure of drinking attitudes and consequences. Using a randomized design, the authors assigned participants either to a group that received a single-session motivational enhancement intervention to reduce risky drinking that focused partly on women’s specific reasons for drinking (n=126) or to an assessment-only control group (n=94). Control group participants attended a 30-min scheduled group session in which they completed an in-group survey on alcohol use over the past three months with no group interaction. Motivational enhancement group participants were asked to select 1 of 25 groups to attend, with enrollment on a first-come, first-served basis. All participants completed weekly online drinking diaries for the 10 weeks following the group session, recording the number of drinks they consumed each day in the past week. At the end of the 4th and 10th weeks, participants completed the RAPI to assess consequences in the past month.
Results:
The results indicate that, relative to the control group participants, intervention participants drank fewer drinks per week, drank fewer drinks at peak consumption, had fewer binge drinking episodes per month, and reported fewer alcohol-related consequences over a 10-week follow-up than assessment-only control participants. Further, the intervention, which targeted women’s reasons for drinking, was more effective in reducing consumption for participants with high social and enhancement motivations for drinking. In addition, the main effect for maximum number of drinks consumed at one time approached significance. Exploratory analyses revealed that ethnicity did not moderate intervention efficacy.
Conclusions:
In order to reduce risk in college women who drink for coping or conformity motives, it may be necessary to design interventions addressing these specific drinking styles. The findings of this study provide potentially important implications for the prevention of high-risk alcohol use during the critical transitional period from high school to college.
Implications for the Field:
The NIAAA (2002) recommends the use of motivational enhancement interventions that simultaneously address alcohol attitudes and behaviors, counter misperceptions about peer attitudes regarding drinking, and increase motivation to change drinking habits. This particular study builds on previous motivational enhancement interventions to reduce college drinking by having a first-year female-specific group-based prevention intervention, a population at increasing risk for developing heavy alcohol use patterns and experiencing negative consequences. The results suggest that targeted interventions among specific cohorts of college students are promising.

LaBrie, Joseph W.; Hummer, Justin F.; Neighbors, Clayton; and Pedersen, Eric R. (2008). “Live Interactive Group-Specific Normative Feedback Reduces Misperceptions and Drinking in College Students: A Randomized Cluster Trial”. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 22, 1, 141-148. return to list

Objective:
This study evaluated the efficacy of a live and interactive group-specific normative feedback intervention designed to correct misperceptions of alcohol-related group norms and subsequently reduce drinking behavior.
Method:
Twenty Greek and service organizations containing 1,162 college students were randomly assigned to intervention or assessment-only control conditions. Participants in the intervention condition attended an intervention during their organization’s regular standing meeting. Data were gathered using computerized handheld keypads (“clickers”) into which participants entered personal responses to a series of alcohol-related questions assessing perceptions of normative group behavior as well as actual individual behavior. These data were then immediately presented in graphical form to illustrate discrepancies between perceived and actual behavioral group norms. Participants were encouraged to examine their personal perceptions and behaviors compared with the actual norms. Follow-up data was collected via online survey at one and two month post-intervention for the intervention condition group and post-initial survey for the control condition groups. The study did not include students in the intervention condition who were not exposed to the intervention in the analyses of the follow up data.
Results:
The findings of the study indicated that compared with the control group, the intervention group reduced drinking behavior and misperceptions of group norms at one month and two month follow-ups after using the interactive polling system. Men and women did not differ with respect to post-intervention drinking after controlling for baseline differences.
Conclusions:
The results demonstrate that the interactive polling system approach appears to be most effective among students who start out with large group-specific normative misperceptions and that reductions in misperceptions mediate actual changes in drinking. This approach produces data on demographic and drinking questions that are equivalent to the data generated by the same questions when posed in traditional confidential surveys. The immediate visual presentation of responses increased participants’ interest in and believability of subsequent responses.
Implications for the Field:
The study demonstrates the effectiveness of a novel, technologically advanced, group-based, brief alcohol intervention that can be implemented with entire groups at relatively low cost.

Objective:
This research was designed to evaluate the efficacy of a personalized normative feedback birthday card intervention aimed at reducing normative perceptions, alcohol consumption, and negative consequences associated with 21st birthday celebrations among college students. The research extended previous examinations of extreme drinking associated with 21st birthday celebrations by exploring drinking context and alcohol-related consequences in connection with this event.
Method:
The study employed a randomized trial evaluating the impact of the birthday card on 21st birthday perceived norms, drinking, and related consequences as compared with an assessment-only control condition. The researchers randomly assigned students turning 21 (n = 1,313) during one academic year at a mid-sized, mid-western university to receive (n = 430) or not receive (n = 410) a birthday card and eBAC calculator about one week prior to the date of their 21st birthday. The birthday card presented three key pieces of information 1) perceptions of the number of drinks consumed by the typical student while celebrating his or her 21st birthday, 2) the actual number of drinks consumed by the typical student while celebrating his or her 21st birthday, and 3) the number of drinks the student intended to consume while celebrating his or her own 21st birthday. This information was intended to show the discrepancy between the normative misperception and the deviation from the drinking norm.
Approximately one week following their birthday, students were asked to complete a brief anonymous survey concerning their birthday celebration activities. The survey included questions regarding demographics as well as the number of drinks consumed, hours spent drinking, and negative consequences occurring during their 21st birthday celebration. Students were also asked their perception of the number of drinks consumed by the typical student during a 21st birthday celebration as well as questions regarding whether they received, read, and liked the birthday card and the card’s impact on their birthday celebration.
Only students who reported 1) consuming at least one drink on their birthday (n = 244) and 2) receiving and reading the card (n = 235) and 3) whose eBAC information could be determined (n = 187) were included in the primary outcome analysis. Among these students (64.7% women, 94.2% Caucasian), the final survey response rate was 20.9% for those who received the card and 23.7% for those who did not receive the card.
Results:
The findings indicated that the birthday card intervention was not successful at reducing drinking or consequences; however, the card did reduce normative misperceptions. Contrary to expectations, students who received the birthday card did not report less drinking behavior compared with students who did not receive the card. This finding is consistent with participants’ perceptions of the effect of the card on their birthday drinking behavior. Participants reported that they liked the card but that the card had little impact on their birthday drinking plans. On the other hand, consistent with expectations, students who received the card had lower or more accurate normative perceptions of the number of drinks the typical student consumed while celebrating his or her 21st birthday compared with those who did not receive the card. Students with lower or accurate perceptions spent fewer hours drinking, consumed less alcohol, and reached lower eBACs compared with students with higher perceptions.
Conclusions:
Although the 21st birthday personalized normative feedback card was not effective at reducing 21st birthday drinking or problems, it can change 21st birthday perceived norms. Prevention efforts other than a birthday card are needed for reducing problematic drinking associated with turning 21.
Implications for the Field:
Brief motivational interviewing (MI) interventions have been found to be efficacious in reducing alcohol use and negative consequences in college students. Future interventions may need to be multi-component and explicitly presented and use actual drinking behaviors instead of intentions. Campaigns need to take into account environmental factors that may contribute to 21st birthday drinking behavior such as location, policy changes, or public media campaigns and should use a more socially proximate normative referent (e.g., same-sex peers) instead of distal referents (e.g., typical college student). Personal normative feedback may work better using computerized or in-person formats where responses are more directly tailored and more clearly present discrepancies related to normative misperceptions and drinking behavior.

Objective:
The research investigated the persuasive impact and detectability of normative social influence in two studies. The goal of the first study was to conduct a preliminary investigation into the extent to which people’s beliefs about what motivates them to conserve energy correspond to the factors of their self-reported intention to conserve. The second study wanted to accomplish three goals: extend the research on normative social influence, assess participants’ ability to detect the influence of normative information, and test the accuracy of naïve psychology-based explanations of energy conservation. The present research examined the contention that individuals underestimate the extent to which their actions in a situation are determined by the similar actions of others.
Method:
In Study 1, the researchers surveyed 810 Californians quarterly for a 3-year period about energy conservation. Researchers conducted a large scale, stratified, telephone survey to explore respondents’ stated reasons for engaging in energy conservation and provide an initial test of the actual factors influencing participants’ conservation behavior. Study 1 survey items were designed to measure self-reported efforts to conserve energy, perceived reasons for conservation, beliefs about the broad benefits of energy conservation, descriptive normative beliefs regarding energy conservation, and demographics. The survey data was part of a larger survey of energy conservation normative and non-normative beliefs, motivations for conserving energy, and actions among Californians conducted from random-digit-dialing interviews between October 2003 and January 2004.
In Study 2, the researchers further examined the perceived influence of normative information by assessing participants’ awareness of the extent to which different messages affected their behavior. Participants included 981 households in the middle-class neighborhoods of San Marcos, California, 509 of which participated in a post-intervention interview (52%). Households were randomly assigned to receive one of five experimental messages: descriptive norm, self-interest, environment, social responsibility, or information-only control. A total of four different energy conservation behaviors were promoted during this study: taking shorter showers, turning off unnecessary lights, turning off the air conditioning at night, and using fans instead of air conditioning.
Twenty messages, one for each of the four behaviors, were created for each of the five conditions and printed on doorhangers. Doorhangers in the information-only condition stated only that participants could save energy by adopting the behavior being promoted. In the descriptive norm, self-interest, environment, and social responsibility conditions, the doorhangers also contained factual motivational information about why the household should adopt the energy-conserving behavior (e.g., 99% of people in your community reported turning off unnecessary lights to save energy) and a graphic that symbolized the condition (e.g., a globe for the environment condition). Included in the present study are 371 households from the sample of interviewed households (73%) that reported seeing and reading the doorhangers that were distributed during the intervention. Following the distribution of the doorhangers, interviewers assessed the extent to which respondents perceived that the doorhangers had motivated them to conserve energy
Results:
Study 1 conducted a three-step hierarchical multiple regression to examine the unique contribution of descriptive normative beliefs on conservation behavior. Significant predictors were age (older participants reporting more conservation than younger ones), language of the survey (with English-speaking respondents conserving more than Spanish-speaking respondents), saving money, environmental protection, and descriptive normative beliefs. Survey results showed that the most highly rated reason for conserving energy was environmental protection, which suggests that people are motivated to conserve energy out of a concern for the environment or future generations. However, the strongest predictor of conservation was the belief that other people are doing it, despite the fact that it was rated as the least important motivating factor. The study found that descriptive normative beliefs were more predictive of behavior than were other relevant beliefs, even though respondents rated such norms as least important in their conservation decisions.
Study 2 confirmed that the positive relationship between descriptive norms and behavior in Study 1 was not simply due to a false consensus effect. Of interest, although the normative message was most effective at changing behavior compared to information highlighting other reasons to conserve, participants did not detect the influence of these messages, rating them as least motivating. Participants in the descriptive norm condition reported that the messages were least motivational. Pairwise comparisons showed that these scores were significantly lower than for participants in the environmental condition and social responsibility condition but not significantly different from the self-interest condition or the information-only condition. This pattern is similar to that found in the survey data reported in Study 1, wherein environmental reasons and social responsibility were identified as the two reasons that people believed were most influential to conserve energy.
Conclusions:
Normative information spurred people to conserve more energy than any of the standard appeals that are often used to stimulate energy conservation, such as protecting the environment, being socially responsible, or even saving money. Taken together, the results from the current studies show that normative information is a powerful but underdetected form of social influence. Normative information is a highly effective way to motivate a change in behavior but people may not be able to identify the true cause of their behavior.
Implications for the Field:
By going beyond environmental protection and social responsibility, normative messages reach a new population of individuals who might not otherwise have a reason to conserve. In addition, direct observation of others is not required for normative social influence to have its effect. Instead, communicating a descriptive norm—how most people behave in a given situation—via written information can induce conformity to the communicated behavior.

Turner, James; Perkins, H. Wesley; and Bauerle, Jennifer. (2008). “Declining Negative Consequences Related to Alcohol Misuse Among Students Exposed to a Social Norms Marketing Intervention on a College Campus.” Journal of American College Health, 57, 1, 85-93. return to list

Objective:
This study assessed yearly exposure to alcohol interventions, alcohol consumption (estimated blood alcohol content [eBAC]), and self-reported alcohol-related negative consequences at a large public university as a result of students being increasingly exposed to a social norms intervention. The social norms campaign initially focused on correcting misperceptions about the quantity and frequency of consumption of alcohol and was expanded to include information about normative and protective behaviors.
Method:
The university initiated a social norms marketing campaign in the fall of 1999, initially targeting first-year students in an effort to reduce harm related to alcohol abuse. The program was then expanded to include all undergraduates and high risk groups in the fall of 2002. From spring 2001 through spring 2006, the university administered a Web-based survey to a random sample of 2,500 undergraduates from a four year university. The survey asked questions to evaluate trends in student alcohol misuse and included only those students who consumed alcohol within the past year in the analysis. Students were surveyed on ten possible negative outcomes they may have experienced as a result of drinking, the number of drinks usually consumed while drinking (eBAC), and recall of first year and campus-wide social norms messages and initiatives.
The 1999 social norms campaign targeted first year students through a monthly series of highly-visible posters in first-year residence halls. The posters accentuated the healthy normative behaviors that a majority of students reported on prior surveys and corrected existing overestimations about the quantity and frequency of heavy drinking among students. The 2002 campaign was a campus-wide general intervention that reached all undergraduate students through student media and a poster campaign. In addition to highlighting campus alcohol consumption norms, the campaign also provided normative information regarding protective behaviors.
Results:
The study assessed the degree to which alcohol-related negative consequences changed throughout the six years of the intervention. The proportion of students reporting no consequences increased substantially from 33% in 2001 to 51% in 2006, whereas the prevalence of multiple consequences declined from 44% to 26% in the same time frame. First year students exposed to the campus-wide social norms campaign reported a 24% reduction in the odds of having an eBAC greater than .08 the last time they partied. In each survey year (2001-2006), a majority of students (89-97%) recalled having seen the social norms posters targeting first-year students two or more times. For the campuswide campaign, recall rate ranged from 56-78% of undergraduates recalled seeing normative alcohol messages once or more from 2003 to 2006.
Conclusions:
The authors believe the evidence strongly supports that the social norms educational intervention succeeded in a high degree of audience penetration, initially among first-year students and later among the entire undergraduate population and high-risk target groups. Students who were reached by these messages reported lower eBACs and a significantly lower probability of experiencing alcohol-related consequences than did students who had no recall of the campus-wide campaign.
Implications for the Field:
Surveying students about their attitudes and behaviors as well as their recall of normative messages is important because it enhances awareness and facilitates the dissemination of relevant campus-specific information about social norms. Using a variety of marketing techniques, misperceptions about both actual campus behaviors (descriptive norms) and widely supported desirable behaviors (injunctive norms) can be corrected, thus encouraging safety and responsibility.



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