Browsing by Subject "social norms"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Encouraging Giving to Women's and Girls' Causes: The Role of Social Norms
    (2018-12-11) Mesch, Debra; Dwyer, Patrick; Sherrin, Steven; Osili, Una; Bergdoll, Jonathan; Pactor, Andrea; Ackerman, Jacqueline
    Using an experimental methodology, the study investigates how social norms can directly influence giving to women’s and girls’ causes. It also examines whether social norms may have differing impacts for men and women. These findings can help nonprofits and fundraising professionals apply a social norms approach to encourage giving.
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    Low-Income Women Describe Fertility-Related Expectations: Descriptive Norms, Injunctive Norms, and Behavior
    (2010-12) Bute, Jennifer J.; Jensen, Robin E.
    Social norms surrounding sexuality, pregnancy, and childbearing may help guide women's health-related behaviors. In this study, we explore low-income women's perceptions of fertility-related norms by allowing women to describe their experiences with normative expectations. Semistructured interviews (n = 30) suggested that women in low-income subject positions articulate descriptive norms that generally correspond with mainstream descriptive norms, identify two major sources of injunctive norms concerning fertility and sexuality— authoritative and peer-oriented—and often align their behaviors according to subgroup expectations communicated in the form of peer-oriented injunctive norms. We discuss these results in light of the extant literature on social norms.
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    Self-efficacy mediates the relationship between social norms and HPV vaccine intentions in undergraduate students
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2016-04-08) Stout, Madison E.; Winger, Joseph G.; Christy, Shannon M.; Mosher, Catherine E.
    Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. The HPV vaccine reduces incidences of genital warts and certain cancers among both men and women. Unfortunately, many undergraduate students have not been vaccinated. Previous research suggests students are more likely to report greater intentions to get vaccinated when others (e.g., friends, physicians) believe they should receive the vaccine; that is, greater social norms are associated with greater vaccine intentions. However, few studies have examined potential mediators of this association. Drawing from the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Health Belief Model, we hypothesized that social norms would be related to vaccine intentions through self-efficacy. Undergraduate students (N=210) who had not received the HPV vaccine completed an online survey. Participants were predominately White (72%), female (67%), heterosexual (92%), and on average 19.9 years of age (SD=3.2). Forty-nine percent were in a romantic relationship, and 55% were sexually active within the past three months. Participants completed HPV vaccine specific measures, including social norms regarding vaccination, self-efficacy for vaccination, and vaccine intentions. Two mediation analyses (one per gender) were conducted to examine whether self-efficacy mediated the relationship between social norms and vaccine intentions. For women and men, greater social norms were related to greater self-efficacy, and greater selfefficacy was related to greater vaccine intentions (ps<0.05); additionally, social norms were indirectly related to vaccine intentions through self-efficacy (p<0.05). For women, after accounting for self-efficacy, social norms were still significantly related to intentions (p<0.05). For men, however, after accounting for self-efficacy, social norms were not significantly related to intentions (p=0.75). Consistent with previous findings, social norms were positively related to vaccine intentions; however, we found that this association was mediated by self-efficacy. Future intervention studies should consider targeting social norms and improving students’ confidence in their ability to obtain the vaccine.
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    Social norms offer explanation for inconsistent effects of incentives on prosocial behavior
    (Elsevier, 2023-07) Graf, Caroline; Suanet, Bianca; Wiepking, Pamala; Merz, Eva-Maria; Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
    Humans are widely considered to be susceptible to incentives, which are frequently employed to encourage specific behaviors. However, incentives have surprisingly inconsistent effects when used to motivate prosocial behavior – sometimes producing no behavioral change or even backfiring. To explain these inconsistencies, we extended a prominent image-based model of prosocial behavior, based on the idea that social norms shape the reputational consequences of receiving incentives. We tested the key predictions of this model by examining the blood donation behavior of 26,000 individuals from 28 European countries. Our preregistered analyses revealed that social norms can indeed predict how incentives, either in the form of financial payments or time off work, relate to individual-level blood donation behavior. Incentives are associated with higher levels of prosociality if they align with existing norms. The results suggest that humans may not be universally persuaded by incentives to behave prosocially, but that the effectiveness of incentives depends on social norms.
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    Social Norms: Do We Love Norms Too Much?
    (Wiley, 2015-03) Bell, David C.; Cox, Mary L.; Department of Sociology, School of Liberal Arts
    Social norms are often cited as the cause of many social phenomena, especially as an explanation for prosocial family and relationship behaviors. And yet maybe we love the idea of social norms too much, as suggested by our failure to subject them to rigorous test. Compared to the detail in social norms theoretical orientations, there is very little detail in tests of normative theories. To provide guidance to researchers who invoke social norms as explanations, we catalog normative orientations that have been proposed to account for consistent patterns of action. We call on researchers to conduct tests of normative theories and the processes such theories assert.
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    Trust in science boosts approval, but not following of COVID-19 rules
    (2021-03) Sulik, Justin; Deroy, Ophelia; Dezecache, Guillaume; Newson, Martha; Zhao, Yi; El Zein, Marwa; Tunçgenç, Bahar; Biostatistics, School of Public Health
    How essential is trust in science to prevent the spread of COVID-19? Previous work shows that people who trust in science are more likely to comply with official guidelines, which suggests that higher levels of compliance could be achieved by improving trust in science. However, analysis of a global dataset (n=4341) suggests otherwise. Trust in science had a small, indirect effect on adherence to the rules. It affected adherence only insofar as it predicted people's approval of prevention measures such as social distancing. Trust in science also mediated the relationship between political ideology and approval of the measures (more conservative people trusted science less and in turn approved of the measures less). These effects varied across countries, and were especially different in the USA. Overall, these results mean that any increase in trust in science is unlikely to yield strong immediate improvements in following COVID-19 rules. Nonetheless, given its relationships with both ideology and individuals' attitudes to the measures, trust in science may be leveraged to yield longer-term and more sustained social benefits.