Teaching and Learning Guide for: Group Norms and the Attitude–Behaviour Relationship
Authors: Smith Joanne R. , Louis Winnifred R. 
Published: July 2009

Author’s Introduction

We discovered a mutual passion for, and conviction in, the power of norms to influence behaviour when we shared an office together as postdoctoral research fellows at the University of Queensland. Prior to this time, we both had independent research programs that focused on norms and social identity. However, upon this serendipitous discovery, we embarked on a program of research designed to understand further the ways in which human behaviour is influenced by what those around us do and what those around us think. The original article is an important milestone in our research relationship because it allowed us to review existing research in the area of group norms and attitude–behaviour relations and also to advance our ideas about the ways in which normative messages can both facilitate and hinder behaviour change.

The issues covered in the original article, namely how social influence processes impact upon the relationship between attitudes and action, are central in social psychology. If you cannot predict behaviour from attitudes, then attempts to change people’s health‐related, consumer, voting, or environmental behaviour through public education, propaganda, and advertising are ineffectual. Social norms are not a new concept in psychology, but wider society is now catching up to the power of social norms as a tool for behaviour change. Social norms – what other people do and what other people think – are one of the most important influences on our behaviour. The majority of us do not want to be different from those around us and, much more than we think or our authorities think, our actual behaviour is heavily influenced by the thoughts and actions of other people.

This teaching and learning guide can be used to develop a course component that focuses specifically on the role of norms and social influence in the attitude–behaviour relationship.

Author Recommends

On the social identity approach to attitude–behaviour relations

Terry, D. J., & Hogg, M. A. (1996). Group norms and the attitude–behaviour relationship: A role for group identification. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 776–793 [doi: 10.1177/0146167296228002].

This article was the first to outline a social identity approach to the role of norms in the attitude–behaviour relationship. The authors outline the approach and present two field studies that demonstrate that norms do influence the attitude–behaviour relationship when those norms are tied to relevant and important group memberships.

Hogg, M. A., & Smith, J. R. (2007). Attitudes in social context: A social identity perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 89–131 [doi: 10.1080/10463280701592070].

This article is a recent review of the social identity approach to attitudes. The central argument of the social identity approach – that our sense of ourselves as group members plays a key role in shaping attitudes and attitudinal phenomena – is presented in some depth. The authors then summarize and discuss research evidence on how social identity processes influence attitude formation, attitude change and attitude–behaviour relations.

On the norm focus approach to attitude–behaviour relations

Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1015–1026 [doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.58.6.1015].

This article was the first to outline the norm focus approach to the role of norms in behaviour. The authors outline the approach and present five field studies on littering behaviour that demonstrate that there are indeed two distinct sources of normative influence – descriptive and injunctive – and that these norms influence behaviour when they are made salient in the immediate context.

Cialdini, R. B. (2003). Crafting normative messages to protect the environment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 105–109 [doi: 10.1111/1467-8721.01242].

In this short, yet engaging, article, Cialdini outlines the situations in which the use of normative messages in behaviour change campaigns can backfire to increase, rather than decrease, the incidence of the problem behaviour. Here, Cialdini argues that campaigns can backfire because communicating the message that the problem behaviour is prevalent creates a powerful negative descriptive norm that inhibits positive behaviour change. The ways in which these effects play out across a number of behavioural domains is discussed.

On integrating the social identity and the norm focus approaches

Smith, J. R., & Louis, W. R. (2008). Do as we say and as we do: The interplay of descriptive and injunctive group norms in the attitude–behaviour relationship. British Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 647–666 [doi: 10.1348/014466607X269748].

This article represents the first empirical work to explicitly combine the social identity and norm focus approaches to social influence in the attitude–behaviour relationship by manipulating group‐level descriptive and injunctive norms orthogonally. In addition, this article addresses the question of the source of the normative messages; that is, do messages come from our group (in‐groups) or other groups (out‐groups).This work confirmed the importance of distinguishing between descriptive and injunctive norms and demonstrated the importance of aligning in‐group norms to produce behaviour change.

Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 472–482 [doi: 10.1086/586910].

This article reports the results of two field experiments testing the effectiveness of different appeals to increase participation in environmental behaviour. Results revealed that appeals that employ descriptive norm messages are more effective than appeals based on environmental protection, particularly if those normative messages are linked to social groups. Although this paper does not draw explicitly on the social identity approach, it does indicate that a combination of approaches is likely to be effective in producing behaviour change.

On applications and interventions

Blanton, H., Koblitz, A., & McCaul, K. D. (2008). Misperceptions about norm misperceptions: Descriptive, injunctive, and affective ‘social norming’ efforts to change health behaviours. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2/3, 1379–1399 [doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00107.x].

This article provides an overview of social norms campaigns that focus on de‐biasing perceptions of the descriptive norm and outlines problems with these campaigns. The authors argue for an alternative based on injunctive norms rather than descriptive norms and provide some suggestions for how these might operate. This article is relevant to recent research by the current authors that suggests that injunctive norms may also be associated with backlash effects.

Wechsler, H., Nelson, T. F., Lee, J. E., Seibring, M., Lewis, C., & Keeling, R. P. (2003). Perception and reality: A national evaluation of social norms marketing interventions to reduce college students’ heavy alcohol use. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 64, 484–494.

This article reports the results of a large‐scale national evaluation of the effectiveness of social norms marketing programs employed in colleges in the Unites States. This evaluation revealed that these programs did not lead to a decrease in alcohol use (assessed via a range of indices). Indeed, on some indices, alcohol use increased at colleges that employed these programs. The authors conclude that there is little evidence to support the effectiveness of social norms marketing programs to reduce alcohol use among college students.

Schultz, P. W., Nolan, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. (2007). The constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological Science, 18, 429–434 [doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01917.x].

This article reports the results of a field experiment that used normative messages to promote household energy consumption. Exposure to information detailing average neighbourhood energy use (i.e. the descriptive norm) had mixed effects. This information produced desirable energy savings among those who were performing worse relative to the neighbourhood norm but actually produced a boomerang effect (i.e. increased subsequent energy use) among those who were performing better relative to the neighbourhood norm. However, the inclusion of an injunctive norm message eliminated the boomerang effect. Thus, this study shows the importance of using both injunctive and descriptive norms to change behaviour, but questions remain as to the processes involved in such behaviour change.

Online Materials

http://www.people.umass.edu/aizen/

This is a link to Icek Aizen’s website. This is a comprehensive resource that outlines the basic ideas behind the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and has detailed instructions on how to conduct a TPB study. In addition, there is an extensive bibliography of TPB articles (by various authors) and it is possible to obtain TPB articles written by Aizen and colleagues (including out‐of‐print chapters) via this website.

http://www.socialnorms.org/index.php

This is a link to the National Social Norms Institute at the University of Virginia. This website includes a wide range of resources and links related to social norms marketing campaigns in the US and other countries.

http://www.socialnormsresources.org/index.php

This is a link to another website that outlines the social norms approach to behaviour change. It includes a broad array of resources and links to case studies.

http://www2.psy.uq.edu.au/~wlouis/

This is a link to the research and teaching resources site for Winnifred Louis. This site contains some useful statistical resources as well as short working papers that summarize the results of research on norms and social influence conducted in her laboratory at the University of Queensland.

http://www.youtube.com

YouTube is a great way to find visual material to use in teaching. If you type in the search term “social norms” you can find a number of clips related to violating social norms. If you type in the search term “social norms campaigns” you can see actual social norms marketing campaigns. You can also type in specific topics (e.g. anti‐alcohol campaigns) to get further examples. These clips can be discussed in class in relation to how they embody the ideas outlined in the articles listed.

Sample Syllabus

Overview

This teaching and learning guide can be used to create a component of a larger syllabus on either attitudes or on social influence. Thus, some background in the social psychology of attitudes and social influence is assumed.

The component would consist of four themes:

The social identity approach to attitude–behaviour relations

The norm focus approach to attitude–behaviour relations

Integrating the social identity and norm focus approaches

Applications and interventions

The course adopts a seminar format in which students are allocated readings to study and discuss in class, with groups of students taking it in turns to lead the class discussion. In addition to a discussion of the articles, all students will be encouraged to bring in examples of behaviour change attempts that they observe from week to week. These examples can then be analyzed in relation to the social influence principles embodied in these change attempts and also in relation to whether these examples would be successful in producing the desired behaviour change.

Focus Questions

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the social identity approach and the norm focus approach to social influence?

What psychological processes are thought to underpin the impact of norms in the social identity approach and in the norm focus approach?

How does the source of the normative message impact upon our willingness to accept the message and change our behaviour?

Which groups and identities do you think would be most useful to employ when trying to produce sustained and positive behaviour change?

How could we develop a campaign to address the issue of alcohol use on campus that harnesses the power of norms but avoids potential backlash effects?

Seminar/Project Idea

To assess this component, students are asked to write a research proposal for a project on social influence in the attitude–behaviour relationship that uses the approaches discussed. Students should select an important social issue for the context of their research (e.g. health behaviour and environmental behaviour). Students can choose to develop a research proposal for a traditional Theory of Planned Behaviour study that uses an expanded normative component. Alternatively, students can choose to develop a research proposal that will test the effectiveness of different normative messages in producing behaviour change. The research proposal must include a literature review and rationale for the proposed research that draws upon the articles discussed but also includes substantial independent research. Students must then outline the proposed methodology for the research, including details of any manipulations and measures that will be employed.