Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do Social Influence and Power Work?
Connect definitions with the people, rules, and outcomes they make visible.
Why you’re reading it. Keep collective conditions alongside individual expectations.
A question to consider. Who sets, enforces, benefits from, and bears the costs of a workplace expectation to stay late?
Why this reading
Researchers use social norm to mean different things. This review maps those disagreements and connects personal expectations with collective rules and institutions.
Before you read
Descriptive expectations concern what others do; injunctive expectations concern approval. A reference group supplies the relevant others. An overview of reviews synthesizes previous syntheses rather than directly testing every underlying study.
Read for
- Compare individual and collective definitions and what each requires measuring.
- Trace information, external obligations, and internal obligations as distinct pathways.
- Distinguish people subject to a norm, those sustaining it, and those benefiting or suffering.
Consider afterwards
- A workplace stays late despite widespread private objections. Which expectations, constraints, and reference groups would you investigate?
Editorial context
The 22 included reviews were English-language works comparing theories across disciplines. These criteria limit coverage. The map organizes explanations; it does not rank intervention effectiveness. Similar behavior alone can reflect shared circumstances or selection rather than normative influence.