Dynamic Norms Promote Sustainable Behavior, Even if It Is Counternormative.

It is well known that people conform to normative information about other people's current attitudes and behaviors. Do they also conform to dynamic norms-information about how other people's behavior is changing over time? We investigated this question in three online and two field experiments. Experiments 1 through 4 examined high levels of meat consumption, a normative and salient behavior that is decreasing in the United States. Dynamic norms motivated change despite prevailing static norms, increasing interest in eating less meat (Experiments 1-3) and doubling meatless orders at a café (Experiment 4). Mediators included the anticipation of less meat eating in the future ( preconformity) and the inference that reducing meat consumption mattered to other people (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiment 5, we took advantage of a natural comparison to provide evidence that dynamic norms can also strengthen social-norm interventions when the static norm is positive; a positive dynamic norm resulted in reduced laundry loads and water use over 3 weeks during a drought.

The expressive function of public policy: renewable energy mandates signal social norms.

Addressing collective action problems requires individuals to engage in coordinated and cooperative behaviours. Existing research suggests that individuals' propensity to work together depends in part on their belief that others support the cause in question. People form their expectations about prevalent beliefs and behaviours from many sources. To date, most of the literature has focussed on how social norm perceptions are inferred from peers or summary statistics. We explore an understudied source of norm information: the passage of policies by democratically elected institutions. Institutional signals, such as the setting of defaults, national laws or policies, can act as coordination devices, signalling or prescribing social norms to large audiences. However, their expressive function is likely to depend on whether the institution is seen as accountable to the public. In two highly powered, pre-registered experiments (N = 11 636), we examine the role of policy signals as a source of social norm information. In Study 1, Americans randomly assigned to learn that their state passed a 100% renewable energy mandate believe that a greater percentage of their state's residents support such a mandate. In Study 2, we replicate this effect for national policy and show that the influence is moderated by information about whether the government represents the will of the people. This article is part of the theme issue 'Social norm change: drivers and consequences'.

Egalitarian norm messaging increases human resources professionals' salary offers to women.

Across the globe, men make markedly more money than women, even within the same position. We introduce egalitarian norm messaging as a potential intervention to increase women's salaries and counter the gender pay gap. In two preregistered experiments with seasoned professionals (N = 435, work experience: M > 8 years, salary negotiations: M > 18 per year), we find a significant gender pay bias-Human Resources (HR) experts offered markedly lower salaries in an online negotiation to (simulated) female versus male candidates with identical qualifications. Moreover, the experiments show that dynamic (Experiments 1a and 2), as well as static egalitarian norm messages (Experiment 1a), increased salary offers to women. Exploratory mediation analyses suggest that the dynamic egalitarian norm effect was driven by HR professionals' feeling of working toward a shared goal of greater equity. A message that merely increased awareness of the pay gap did not elicit this feeling and did not significantly increase salary offers to women but resulted in fairly equal treatment of men and women (Experiment 2). While the egalitarian norm intervention significantly increased salary offers to women, it also unexpectedly reduced offers to men, thereby reversing the gender bias (Experiment 2). We discuss the theoretical contribution with regard to gender pay bias and egalitarian norm interventions, as well as applied implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half.

Pluralistic ignorance-a shared misperception of how others think or behave-poses a challenge to collective action on problems like climate change. Using a representative sample of Americans (N = 6119), we examine whether Americans accurately perceive national concern about climate change and support for mitigating policies. We find a form of pluralistic ignorance that we describe as a false social reality: a near universal perception of public opinion that is the opposite of true public sentiment. Specifically, 80-90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66-80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to only be between 37-43% on average. Thus, supporters of climate policies outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true. Further, Americans in every state and every assessed demographic underestimate support across all polices tested. Preliminary evidence suggests three sources of these misperceptions: (i) consistent with a false consensus effect, respondents who support these policies less (conservatives) underestimate support by a greater degree; controlling for one's own personal politics, (ii) exposure to more conservative local norms and (iii) consuming conservative news correspond to greater misperceptions.

Scaling Up Change: A Critical Review and Practical Guide to Harnessing Social Norms for Climate Action.

Anthropogenic carbon emissions have the potential to trigger changes in climate and ecosystems that would be catastrophic for the well-being of humans and other species. Widespread shifts in production and consumption patterns are urgently needed to address climate change. Although transnational agreements and national policy are necessary for a transition to a fully decarbonized global economy, fluctuating political priorities and lobbying by vested interests have slowed these efforts. Against this backdrop, bottom-up pressure from social movements and shifting social norms may offer a complementary path to a more sustainable economy. Furthermore, norm change may be an important component of decarbonization policies by accelerating or strengthening the impacts of other demand-side measures. Individual actions and policy support are social processes-they are intimately linked to expectations about the actions and beliefs of others. Although prevailing social norms often reinforce the status quo and unsustainable development pathways, social dynamics can also create widespread and rapid shifts in cultural values and practices, including increasing pressure on politicians to enact ambitious policy. We synthesize literature on social-norm influence, measurement, and change from the perspectives of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and economics. We discuss the opportunities and challenges for the use of social-norm and social-tipping interventions to promote climate action. Social-norm interventions aimed at addressing climate change or other social dilemmas are promising but no panacea. They require in-depth contextual knowledge, ethical consideration, and situation-specific tailoring and testing to understand whether they can be effectively implemented at scale. Our review aims to provide practitioners with insights and tools to reflect on the promises and pitfalls of such interventions in diverse contexts.

CHILDHOOD TEMPERAMENT-BASED ANTICIPATORY GUIDANCE IN AN HMO SETTING: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY.

This study investigates whether individualized, anticipatory temperament guidance could benefit the parent-child relationship and improve children's mental health over time. Parents of preschoolers in a health management organization completed a temperament questionnaire, received written parenting information tailored to their child's temperament, and were asked to complete a program evaluation questionnaire. The numbers of subsequent visits to the pediatric and psychiatry departments with anxiety, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other externalizing behavior diagnoses were compared over 15 years to a control sample that received only standard care. Parents positively reviewed the program and boys who received the intervention had fewer visits with psychiatric diagnoses. Analyses revealed an interaction effect, where boys with harder-to-manage temperaments saw a greater reduction in visits from the intervention. By sensitizing parents to their child's temperament and helping parents understand and manage temperament-related behaviors, anticipatory guidance can encourage a positive parent-child relationship and reduce future occurrences of psychiatric diagnoses.