Browsing by Subject "Social norms"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Alcohol use and related problems among college students and their noncollege peers : the competing roles of personality and peer influence
(2011-08) Quinn, Patrick Donovan; Fromme, Kim; Harden, Kathryn P.
Although alcohol use and related problems are highly prevalent in emerging adulthood overall, college students drink somewhat more than do their peers who do not attend college. The personal or social influences underlying this difference, however, are not yet well understood. The present study examined whether personality traits (i.e., self-regulation and sensation seeking) and peer influence (i.e., descriptive drinking norms) contributed to student status differences. At approximately age 22, 4-year college students (n = 331) and noncollege emerging adults (n = 502) completed web-based surveys, including measures of alcohol use, alcohol-related problems, personality, and social norms. College students drank only slightly more heavily. This small difference, however, reflected personality suppression. College students were lower in trait-based risk for drinking, and accounting for traits revealed a stronger positive association between attending college and drinking more heavily. Although noncollege emerging adults reported greater descriptive drinking norms for social group members, norms appeared to more strongly influence alcohol use among college students. Finally, despite drinking less, noncollege individuals experienced more alcohol-related problems. The association between attending college and drinking heavily may be larger than previously estimated, and it may be masked by biased selection into college as a function of both self-regulation and sensation seeking. Differing patterns of alcohol use, its predictors, and its consequences emerged for the college and noncollege samples, suggesting that differing intervention strategies may best meet the needs of each population.
Are you a good person, or just being good? : social norms moderate consistency and licensing effects in social media
(2019-08) Ryoo, Yuhosua; Drumwright, Minette E.; Atkinson, Lucinda; Scheinbaum, Angeline C; Pounders, Kathrynn; Irwin, Julie R
When and why do consumers help more or less after engaging in a prosocial behavior? This question has been an interesting topic of research especially in this time when social media has an influential effect on an individual’s ethical decision making. However, little effort has been made to understand and reconcile this conflicting behavior. Based on two philosophical approaches to ethics (normative and behavioral), this research identifies that consumers act prosocially not only because they are a good person, but they want to be viewed as a good person by others. This research makes novel predictions that these two motives have differential effects on the pursuit of subsequent prosocial behavior, and the dominance of a particular motive is determined by the type of social norms that are used in an initial prosocial campaign. Across three studies, the present research demonstrates that consumers express more favorable reactions toward the subsequent prosocial campaign when their initial prosocial behavior is encouraged by a normative message highlighting what they ought to do – the consistency effect of injunctive norms. On the contrary, consumers show less favorable responses toward the subsequent prosocial campaign when their initial prosocial behavior is motivated by a normative message that described how the majority of people behave in that situation – the licensing effect of descriptive norms. Two dimensions of moral identity (moral internalization and moral symbolization), which represent two motives for helping behavior, mediate the consistency effect of injunctive norms and the licensing effect of descriptive norms, respectively. This paper also proves how an additional moral message highlighting the internal aspects of helping behavior can mitigate the licensing effect of descriptive norms. Three causes that are important in society (helping underprivileged children, helping homeless people, and helping people with disabilities) and two different online platforms (Facebook and a website) are used to ensure the generalizability of the research. This paper is expected to spur future work clarifying divergent findings and examining consumers’ sustainable prosocial behavior
An experimental test of collegiate drinking norms
(2011-05) Patel, Amee Bipin; Fromme, Kim; Beevers, Christopher G.; Beretvas, Susan N.; Josephs, Robert A.; Markman, Arthur B.
Social norms play a pivotal role in both explaining the development and maintenance of collegiate alcohol use and creating prevention and intervention programs targeted at reducing heavy drinking. By theoretically functioning as a model of normative and popular behavior, descriptive and injunctive norms are consistently associated with college drinking. In the current study, we endeavored to test the mechanisms through which social norms influence drinking by experimentally manipulating normative beliefs. Participants (N = 181) were assigned to one of nine conditions in a 3 (descriptive norms (DN): positive, negative, none) x 3 (injunctive norms (IN): positive, negative, none) experimental design. Norms exposure occurred within a series of three same-gender Internet-based chat room sessions. The norms manipulation was partially successful in creating groups with distinct normative beliefs, with the no norms groups failing to maintain a neutral norm for both descriptive and injunctive norms. Consequently, no descriptive norms groups were combined with positive descriptive norms groups and no injunctive norms groups were combined with negative injunctive norms groups, resulting in a 2 (DN: positive, negative) x 2 (IN: positive, negative) design for analyses. Overall findings for type (DN, IN) and valence (positive, negative) of norms indicated that participants globally reduced descriptive norms and drinking from pre-chat room to post-chat room, regardless of the type or valence of the manipulation, indicating that there were no experimental effects by condition. Whereas drinking appeared to stabilize at post-chat room, descriptive norms continued to decrease by three-month follow-up. Injunctive norms and personal attitudes about alcohol use also decreased by three-month follow-up. Although we were unsuccessful in changing normative beliefs in expected directions, these findings have important implications for college prevention and intervention programs for reducing drinking. The lack of experimental effects suggested that changing norms may be more complex than previously hypothesized and that changes in norms may not result in changes in drinking, which is the purported mechanism of change in norms-based interventions. These results further suggested that continued research is necessary to provide empirical support for a causal link between norms and drinking and that alternative explanations for the association between norms and drinking need to be considered.
The joint effect of descriptive social norms and anticipated emotion on distal benefit behavior : proposing emotional descriptive norms messages (EDNMs) based on message design approach using verbal and visual cues
(2019-06-18) Koh, Hye Seung; Cunningham, Isabella C. M.; Wilcox, Gary W; Dudo, Anthony D; Lapinski, Maria K
This dissertation describes research which applies theory from the fields of communication and social psychology to create and test persuasive messages aimed at increasing public engagement with recycling. Recycling is a pro-environmental behavior which is often costly on front end but provides distal benefits. Although people often acknowledge the necessity of this behavior, they do not always follow through due to the uncertainty and ambiguity resulting from distal benefits. Accordingly, various persuasion tactics such as social norms have been utilized to motivate people to engage in socially desirable distal behavior, recycling. As an effort to increase the applicability of social norms in the context of pro-environmental behaviors, this dissertation proposed a new message design strategy, an emotional social norms message, by incorporating future-oriented discrete emotions, in particular, anticipated pride, into a standard social norms message to demonstrate if emotions enhance norm-congruent behaviors. Specifically, the current study tested whether exposure to emotional descriptive norms messages (EDNMs), which contain both descriptive norms information and anticipated pride appeal, influences emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes relative to standard descriptive norms messages (SDNMs), which contain only descriptive norms information. Further, the current study examined the underlying mechanism and boundary condition of the emotional descriptive norms messages (EDNM) processing with anticipation of emotional outcome as a mediator and behavioral privacy as a moderator in the relationship between exposure to EDNMs and behavioral intentions. An online experiment was conducted using a 2 (anticipated pride: presence vs. absence) x 2 (order of presentation) x 2 (behavioral privacy: private vs. public) pre- and post-test between-subject design with a control group. The number of 280 participants, a nationally representative sample of the U.S., were recruited. The results showed that participants who viewed the EDNMs experienced greater anticipated pride than those who viewed the SDNMs. Further, anticipated pride mediated the effects of EDNMs on intention to recycle and intention to talk about recycling with their family such that EDNMs elicited greater anticipated pride, which led to greater intention to recycle and intention to talk compared to did SDNMs.
The ties that bind: norms, networks, information, and the organization of political violence
(2009-08) Christou, Odysseas; Wagner, R. Harrison (Robert Harrison)
The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the role of social norms and social networks on the organization of political violence. Challenging traditional accounts of collective action, this dissertation presents an alternative theoretical framework of recruitment by organizations that aim to engage in political violence. The framework hypothesizes that the use of social norms and social networks can help overcome the collective action problem for such organizations by minimizing the need for selective incentive provision. The theoretical framework is applied to two in-depth historical case studies of the conflicts in Chechnya (1994–1996 and 1999–2009) and Sierra Leone (1991–2002). Each case study is composed of two analyses of the organization of political violence. In the case of Chechnya, the organization of Chechen resistance in the First Russo-Chechen War (1994–1996) and the organization of Chechen resistance in the Second Russo-Chechen War (1999–2009) are treated as separate units of analysis. In the case of Sierra Leone, the units of analysis are the Revolutionary United Front that initiated the Sierra Leonean Civil War in 1991, and the Civil Defense Forces that were organized in opposition to the Revolutionary United Front in the mid-1990s. The analysis of the results from the case studies supports the hypotheses of the theoretical framework. Both case studies exhibit significant within-case variation. In both cases, it is shown that use of the norms and networks of the sociopolitical environment within which the organizations of political violence operate has a favorable effect on successful recruitment, and that non-use of these mechanisms has a detrimental effect. In addition, the results have implications for current theoretical debates in the literature on domestic conflict, as well as policy-related implications for the potential for conflict mediation.