Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do Social Influence and Power Work?
Bring norms, context, and outcome measurement to the intervention comparisons.
Why you’re reading it. Evaluate an attempt to redirect influence.
A question to consider. Before using a changing-norm message about working hours, how would you establish its truth, relevance, behavioral effect, and dependence on the setting?
Why this reading
Information about how behavior is changing may differ from information about what most people currently do. These experiments test that distinction using intentions and field outcomes.
Before you read
A static norm describes a current pattern; a dynamic norm describes change. Mediation concerns a proposed pathway. Cluster assignment gives an entire group or setting the same condition.
Read for
- Compare message wording and the proposed importance and future-expectation pathways.
- Separate interest in eating less meat from purchases and laundry use.
- Count independent assigned settings as well as individual observations.
Consider afterwards
- What would you measure before attributing changed behavior to a norm message rather than its setting or practical opportunities?
Editorial context
The laundry test assigned only three buildings, so repeated measurements do not supply many independent settings. Later menu studies involving the same researchers found modest, variable, and sometimes opposite effects. These findings invite local testing rather than promising a universal intervention.