ABSTRACT

Social norms have been implemented to change a variety of behaviors. Yet, these studies show noticeable dispersion of effects. We suggest that such dispersion is partially due to people perceiving reasons for following a certain norm to be more or less appealing. In testing this proposition, we couple descriptive norms with a self-persuading technique (i.e. the self-persuading norm). We propose that the self-persuading norm operate in two steps: 1) self-persuasion leads to value-matched information, 2) value-matched information is more self-relevant, making the norm more influential. Across three experiments, we consistently found that self-persuading norms are more influential than simple descriptive norms and a control condition. The practical applications are straightforward: adding self-persuasive content seems to strengthen the descriptive norm.

摘要

已经实施了社会规范来改变各种行为。然而，这些研究显示出明显的效果分散。我们认为，这种分散部分是由于人们认为遵循某种规范或多或少具有吸引力的原因。在测试这个命题时，我们将描述性规范与自我说服技术（即自我说服规范）结合起来。我们提出自我说服规范分两个步骤运作：1）自我说服导致价值匹配信息，2）价值匹配信息更自我相关，使规范更具影响力。在三个实验中，我们一致发现自我说服规范比简单的描述性规范和控制条件更有影响力。实际应用很简单：