Social Norms
Collectively held beliefs about what kind of behavior is appropriate in a given situation. They range from specific customs—for example, the Western custom of shaking hands with somebody when you meet them for the first time—to more general rules that govern behavior and influence our understanding of other people.
"People seem simply to respond best to norms set by others in similar settings and circumstances" — Nudge
"It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one" — The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
Related studies:
- Aronson, E., & Aronson, J. (2018). The social animal. Worth Publishers, Macmillan Learning.
- Aronson, E., & O’Leary, M. (1982). The relative effectiveness of models and prompts on energy conservation: A field experiment in a shower room. Journal of Environmental Systems, 12(3), 219-224.
- Burger, J. M., Sanchez, J., Imberi, J. E., & Grande, L. R. (2009). The norm of reciprocity as an internalized social norm: Returning favors even when no one finds out. Social Influence, 4(1), 11-17.
- Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological bulletin, 117(3), 497.
- Easton, M. (2018, February 11). How should we tackle the loneliness epidemic? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42887932
- Cialdini, R. B., & Trost, M. R. (1998). Social influence: Social norms, conformity and compliance.
- Cialdini, R. B., Vincent, J. E., Lewis, S. K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & Darby, B. L. (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-face technique. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 31(2), 206.
- Kallgren, C. A., Reno, R. R., & Cialdini, R. B. (2000). A focus theory of normative conduct: When norms do and do not affect behavior. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 26(8), 1002-1012.
- Prentice, D. A., & Miller, D. T. (1993). Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus: some consequences of misperceiving the social norm. Journal of personality and social psychology, 64(2), 243.
- McLeod, S. (2016). What is conformity? Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/conformity.html#sherif
- Burger, J. M., Horita, M., Kinoshita, L., Roberts, K., & Vera, C. (1997). Effects on time on the norm of reciprocity. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 19(1), 91-100.
- Zenko, M. (2018, October 19). Commentary: Leaders can make really dumb decisions. This exercise can fix that. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2018/10/19/red-teams-decision-making-leadership/
- Bregman, P. (2015, October 21). The high cost of conformity, and how to avoid it. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/10/the-high-cost-of-conformity-and-how-to-avoid-it
- Ansfield, B. (2019, December 27). How a 50-year-old study was misconstrued to create destructive broken-windows policing. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/27/how-year-old-study-was-misconstrued-create-destructive-broken-windows-policing/
- Field, A. (2022, April 21). Socially responsible consumer spending at a record high. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/annefield/2021/12/19/socially-responsible-consumer-spending-at-a-record-high/
- Neuman, Y., & Cohen, Y. (2023). AI for identifying Social Norm Violation. Scientific Reports, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35350-x