Public policies often involve “norm nudging”, the use of norm information to steer individual behavior in a prosocial direction. Analysis of social norm messaging often concentrates on the outcome measure: the potential change in behavior.
In our review, we explore two different flavors of social norms: strength and stability. These two fundamental features are crucial for understanding norm change and designing effective interventions.
Over the past few years, public policy has focused on understanding what prevents individuals or groups from adopting beneficial practices or giving up harmful ones.
Societies are rife with negative, damaging practices, from open defecation to female genital cutting (FGC), endemic in many developing countries, to corruption and violence against women and children that we also witness in many Western societies.
What is the difference between a chair and a social norm? Both are human artefacts, existing for human use. Yet think for a moment what would happen if, like in an old episode of The Twilight Zone, all life on earth was wiped out. All life but one.
This article addresses several issues raised by Nichols, Gintis, and Skyrms and Zollman in their comments on my book, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms.
Nudges are popular types of interventions. Recent years have seen the rise of ‘norm-nudges’—nudges whose mechanism of action relies on social norms, eliciting or changing social expectations.
A descriptive norm is a behavioral rule that individuals follow when their empirical expectations of others following the same rule are met. We aim to provide an account of the emergence of descriptive norms by first looking at a simple case, that of the standing ovation.
Science is integral to society because it can inform individual, government, corporate, and civil society decision-making on issues such as public health, new technologies or climate change.
In the first phase of our study of the social determinants of open defecation in India, we have produced a report detailing how social networks influence latrine ownership. We also explore demographic predictors of ownership and use and how our findings differ from existing literature.