Just Another Norm in the Wall? Perceptions of the Social Norm of Voting in a Diverse Universe of Social Norms About Public Actions

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achim Goerres ◽  
Florian Rabuza
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
The Social

Can Humanism be the Social Norm?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon D. Welch
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social

Assaults on truth and divisions about the nature of wise governance are not momentary political challenges, unique to particular moments in history. Rather, they demonstrate fundamental weaknesses in human reasoning and core dangers in ways of construing both individual freedom and cohesive communities. It will remain an ongoing challenge to learn to deal rationally with what is an intrinsic irrationality in human cognition and with what is an intrinsic tendency toward domination and violence in human collectivities. In times of intense social divisions, it is vital to consider the ways in which humanism might function as the social norm by, paradoxically, functioning in a way different from other social norms. Humanism is not the declaration that a certain set of values or norms are universally valid. At its best and most creative, humanism is not limited to a particular set of norms, but is, rather, the commitment to a certain process in which norms are continuously created, critically evaluated, implemented, sustained or revised. Humanism is a process of connection, perception, implementation, and critique, and it applies this process as much to itself as to other traditions.

Is Gender-Based Violence a Social Norm? Rethinking Power in a Popular Development Intervention

2020 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-105
Author(s):  
Amy Piedalue ◽  
Amanda Gilbertson ◽  
Kalissa Alexeyeff ◽  
Elise Klein
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Critical Revision ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Control

Changing social norms has become the preferred approach in global efforts to prevent gender-based violence (GBV). In this article, we trace the rise of social norms within GBV-related policy and practice and their transformation from social processes that exist in the world to beliefs that exist in the minds of individuals. The analytic framework that underpins social norms approaches has been subject to ongoing critical revision but continues to have significant issues in its conceptualisation of power and its sidelining of the political economy. These issues are particularly apparent in the use of individualised measures of social norms that cannot demonstrate causation, and conflation of social norms with culture. Recognising that the pressure to measure may be a key factor in reducing the complexity of the social norms approach, we call for the use of mixed methods in documenting the factors and processes that contribute to GBV and the effectiveness of interventions. As social norms approaches are increasingly prioritised over addressing the non-normative contributors to GBV (such as access to and control over productive resources), awareness of the limitations of social norms approaches is vital.

scholarly journals How to Solve the Social Norm Conflict Dilemma of Green Consumption: The Moderating Effect of Self-Affirmation

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wanda Ge ◽  
Guanghua Sheng ◽  
Hongli Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Injunctive Norms ◽  
Descriptive Norms ◽  
Green Consumption ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Maximum Utility ◽  
The Social

Social norms are important social factors that affect individual behavioral change. Using social norms to promote green consumption is receiving increasing attention. However, due to the different formation processes and mechanisms of the behavioral influence of the different types of social norms, using social norms to promote green consumption often has social norm conflict situations (injunctive norms + negative descriptive norms). Thus, it is difficult to attain the maximum utility of social norms. The present research found that social norm conflict weakens the role of injunctive norms in promoting green consumption. Specifically, negative descriptive norms weaken the role of injunctive norms in promoting green consumption. Alienation, which manifests through powerlessness and meaninglessness, plays a mediating role in the relationship between social norm conflict and green consumption. Self-affirmation moderates the mediating role of alienation between social norm conflicts and green consumption. Self-affirmation reduces the alienation caused by social norm conflict, thereby alleviating the weakening effect of social norm conflict on green consumption.

scholarly journals Optimal Contracting with Endogenous Social Norms

2008 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 1459-1475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Fischer ◽  
Steven Huddart
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Adverse Selection ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Peer Group ◽  
Selection Problem ◽  
Monetary Incentives ◽  
Optimal Contracting ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adverse Selection Problem ◽  
Group Agents

Research in sociology and ethics suggests that individuals adhere to social norms of behavior established by their peers. Within an agency framework, we model endogenous social norms by assuming that each agent's cost of implementing an action depends on the social norm for that action, defined to be the average level of that action chosen by the agent's peer group. We show how endogenous social norms alter the effectiveness of monetary incentives, determine whether it is optimal to group agents in a single or two separate organizations, and may give rise to a costly adverse selection problem when agents' sensitivities to social norms are unobservable. (JEL D23, D82, D86, Z13)

What Factors Moderate Self-Other Discrepancies in Decision Making? Results from a Vaccination Scenario

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dafina Petrova ◽  
Rocio Garcia-Retamero ◽  
Joop van der Pligt
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Risk Attitudes ◽  
Sexually Transmitted ◽  
Transmitted Virus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decisions For Others ◽  
Risky Decisions

AbstractWhen we make risky decisions for others, we tend to follow social norms about risks. This often results in making different decisions for others than we would make for ourselves in a similar situation (i.e., self-other discrepancies). In an experiment, we investigated self-other discrepancies in young adults’ decisions to purchase a vaccine against a sexually-transmitted virus for themselves or for another person (i.e., the target of the decision). When the target’s preferences were in line with social norms, surrogates showed large self-other discrepancies in line with these norms. When the target’s preferences were contrary to social norms, surrogates did not show self-other discrepancies in line with these preferences; instead they still followed social norms, F(1, 140) = 21.45, p < .001, ηp2 = .13. Surrogates with lower numeracy, F(2, 128) = 3.44, p = .035, ηp2 = .05, and higher empathy, F(2, 128) = 3.72, p = .027, ηp2 = .06, showed self-other discrepancies more in line with the target’s preferences, even when these were contrary to the norm. Surrogates whose own risk attitudes were contrary to social norms showed larger self-other discrepancies, F(1, 128) = 5.38, p = .022, ηp2 = .04. These results demonstrate that perceived social norms about risk can predict self-other discrepancies in risky decisions, even when the target’s preferences are known and at odds with the social norm. Further, the surrogates’ numeracy, empathy, and propensity to take risks influence the extent to which risky decisions for others resemble risky decisions for oneself.

scholarly journals Use of Social Norms in the Production of Legal Norms : A Genealogical and Critical Approach to Nudges

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-142
Author(s):  
Anne Brunon-Ernst
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Legal Norm ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Key Terms

The text looks into the conditions justifying the use of a social norm as the basis for establishing a legally binding rule. It starts with the definition of some key-terms (nudges, behavioural insights, social norms) before describing initiatives led by the UK Nudge Unit and other behaviourally-informed policies, such as default options, used in a legal context. This helps to highlight the type of problems related to the incorporation of social norms in legal norms, especially the importance of deviance to the social norm. Jeremy Bentham’s and Michel Foucault’s writings can be used to solve the problems raised. A framework can be devised to explain when a social norm can legitimately be incorporated in a legal norm. Indeed, beyond statistical evidence which identifies recurring patterns of behaviour, only a meta-norm can justify the choice of a legal norm. It is the efficacy of the norm which appears as a legitimising factor as it allows the promotion either of the productive forces in society (according to Foucault) or of utilitarian principles (according to Bentham). However, it seems that this meta-norm can be legitimately imposed only if it emanates from a strict deliberative discipline and is publicised. The article thus concludes that deliberation and publicity are the two means allowing to check that the legal norm complies with the meta-norm, thus legitimising the use of a social norm as a legally binding rule.

scholarly journals The emergence of deviance: Experiments testing the personal effects of violating a social norm

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Gomila ◽  
Elizabeth Levy Paluck
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Monetary Incentive ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
Randomized Experiments ◽  
Individual Motivation ◽  
Material Interest ◽  
The Social ◽  
Behavioral Games ◽  
Strong Norm

Social norms are such powerful drivers of human behavior that people conform to social norms even when they would prefer to violate them or when conforming is not in their personal material interest. Researchers have theorized that in these cases, people conform to avoid the social and psychological costs of deviance (e.g., guilt, self-deprecation, punishment). Notwithstanding the possible costs, people do decide to violate norms. We conducted two randomized experiments (N = 3,499) to explore the behavioral and psychological consequences of deviating from norms. Participants played behavioral games governed by norms of cooperation, without a mechanism for players to punish one another. Participants assigned to the treatment condition, unlike those in the control condition, were offered a monetary incentive to deviate from a strong norm of cooperation in one round of the game. Violating this norm significantly increased their propensity to violate other social norms in new settings involving new groups and new games (with no incentive to deviate). Post-treatment survey data suggest that violating norms causes people to depreciate their expectation of the costs associated with violation, but does not lead them to update their views of the self. Together, these results challenge and inform traditional views of deviance as personality or a stable individual motivation or trait, and suggest that deviance can emerge from an experience of deviance at any point in one's life.

scholarly journals The ethics of inattention: revitalising civil inattention as a privacy-protecting mechanism in public spaces

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Sharon ◽  
Bert-Jaap Koops
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Erving Goffman ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Digital Surveillance ◽  
The Social

AbstractSocieties evolve practices that reflect social norms of appropriateness in social interaction, for example when and to what extent one should respect the boundaries of another person’s private sphere. One such practice is what the sociologist Erving Goffman called civil inattention—the social norm of showing a proper amount of indifference to others—which functions as an almost unnoticed yet highly potent privacy-preserving mechanism. These practices can be disrupted by technologies that afford new forms of intrusions. In this paper, we show how new networked technologies, such as facial recognition (FR), challenge our ability to practice civil inattention. We argue for the need to revitalise, in academic and policy debates, the role of civil inattention and related practices in regulating behaviour in public space. Our analysis highlights the relational nature of privacy and the importance of social norms in accomplishing and preserving it. While our analysis goes some way in supporting current calls to ban FR technology, we also suggest that, pending a ban and in light of the power of norms to limit what is otherwise technically possible, cultivating new practices of civil inattention may help address the challenges raised by FR and other forms of digital surveillance in public.

Social norms, social value, and judgments of responsibility 1Preparation of this paper was supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship. We thank Jessica Kadis for her valuable help in putting the finishing touches to this paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loraine Devos-Comby ◽  
Thierry Devos
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Hiv Positive ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
Responsibility Attribution ◽  
Swiss National Science Foundation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

We investigated the impact of social norms on responsibility attribution. We hypothesized that an actor would be held more responsible for a negative outcome when adopting a counternormative, rather than normative, conduct. Under these circumstances, judging someone responsible consists of casting the negative social value of the conduct onto the actor. In three experiments, we found that an HIV-positive person was judged more responsible for the infection when his or her conduct transgressed a social norm than when it did not. As expected, this effect was mediated by the social value attributed to the actor, but not by the affective reactions toward him or her. In addition, we ruled out several alternative interpretations of these findings. In Experiment 1, judgments of responsibility were unrelated to causal inferences. In Experiment 2, the salience of the counternormative conduct did not affect the impact of the social norm on responsibility attribution. In Experiment 3, the validation (commonness) of the conduct did not moderate the effect of its normativeness. Overall, the results provide strong support for the idea that responsibility attribution is based on the social desirability of behaviors.

Marketing social norms: Social marketing and the ‘social norm approach’

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Burchell ◽  
Ruth Rettie ◽  
Kavita Patel
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Marketing ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Marketing Social ◽  
The Social
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