Deterrent and Retributive Punishment: Evidence on Their Relative Importance and the Influence of Social Norms

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Group Norms and the Attitude–Behaviour Relationship

The role of social norms has played an often unrecognized role in the perception of and action to assist low-income urban women who are in violent relationships. Two forms of social norms will be assessed, including descriptive norms--what people typically do to assist women in a violent relationship--and injunctive norms--defined as what people should do to assist women. This study will present our initial findings into the development of measures to assess women's perception of their community's social norms toward assisting women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) and how these norms are related to women's perception of the community, reasons for community assistance toward women experiencing IPV, and women's own experience of IPV. Systematic measurement development processes were applied to reliably and validly develop the social norms measures. A three-phase approach was used to develop eight paired items measuring descriptive and injunctive norms. A total of 176 low-income urban women were interviewed and the scale responses were compared to length of time at the residence, perceptions of their neighborhood, perceived reasons for community involvement and non-involvement in assisting women experiencing IPV, and IPV experienced as an adult. The two developed social norms scales were found to have high internal consistency alpha coefficients of 0.84 for descriptive norms and 0.93 for injunctive norms. Paired t tests were statistically significant, denoting higher injunctive than descriptive social norms. Lowered descriptive norms were found among younger women, women who reported that they did not think their neighborhood was a good place to live, women who had ever experienced intimate partner violence as an adult, and perceived lower reasons for neighbor involvement and higher reasons for neighbor non-involvement toward assisting women experiencing IPV. Higher levels of injunctive social norms were statistically associated with living in a good place and increased perceived reasons for neighbor involvement toward assisting women experiencing IPV. Significant differences between descriptive and injunctive norms suggest that women, especially those who are currently experiencing IPV, would prefer greater support from community neighbors than they are currently providing. The descriptive and injunctive social norms scales demonstrated a high level of internal reliability and significantly associated with other influencing factors thought to be associated with social norms. Overall, the performance of the injunctive and descriptive norms scales support their use as a tool to investigate social norms toward neighbors taking action to assist women experiencing IPV.

The authors suggest that injunctive and descriptive social norms engage different psychological response tendencies when made selectively salient. On the basis of suggestions derived from the focus theory of normative conduct and from consideration of the norms' functions in social life, the authors hypothesized that the 2 norms would be cognitively associated with different goals, would lead individuals to focus on different aspects of self, and would stimulate different levels of conflict over conformity decisions. Additionally, a unique role for effortful self-regulation was hypothesized for each type of norm-used as a means to resist conformity to descriptive norms but as a means to facilitate conformity for injunctive norms. Four experiments supported these hypotheses. Experiment 1 demonstrated differences in the norms' associations to the goals of making accurate/efficient decisions and gaining/maintaining social approval. Experiment 2 provided evidence that injunctive norms lead to a more interpersonally oriented form of self-awareness and to a greater feeling of conflict about conformity decisions than descriptive norms. In the final 2 experiments, conducted in the lab (Experiment 3) and in a naturalistic environment (Experiment 4), self-regulatory depletion decreased conformity to an injunctive norm (Experiments 3 and 4) and increased conformity to a descriptive norm (Experiment 4)-even though the norms advocated identical behaviors. By illustrating differentiated response tendencies for each type of social norm, this research provides new and converging support for the focus theory of normative conduct.

This article draws on the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct to examine whether injunctive social norms relating to perceived environmental management practices shape employees’ self-reported pro-environmental behaviour in their private sphere. To test our hypotheses, we employed a mixed methods research approach that involved a cross-sectional analysis and a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental field study in the German tourist industry. Our results verify the context-bridging influence of perceived environmental management practices on employees’ self-reported private sphere pro-environmental behaviour. Further, they reveal that this relationship is partially mediated by descriptive social norms among co-workers. Thereby, our findings shed light on a thus far neglected dynamic between injunctive and descriptive social norms that constitutes a pathway for contextual spillover. Our study thus challenges the prominent proposition that the influence of injunctive social norms remains restricted to contexts in which the norm is currently salient. The results further develop existing theory by demonstrating how a dynamic interaction between injunctive and descriptive norms can support the emergence and dissemination of social norms across contexts and they reveal how businesses can shape this process.

Individual-level behavior can be influenced by injunctive and descriptive social network norms surrounding that behavior. There is a need to understand how the influence of social norms within an individual's social networks may influence individual-level sexual behavior. We aimed to typologize the network-level norms of sexual behaviors within the social networks of Black sexual and gender minoritized groups (SGM) assigned male at birth. Survey data were collected in Chicago, Illinois, USA, between 2018 and 2019 from Black SGM. A total of 371 participants provided individual-level information about sociodemographic characteristics and HIV vulnerability from sex (i.e., condomless sex, group sex, use of alcohol/drugs to enhance sex) and completed an egocentric network inventory assessing perceptions of their social network members' (alters') injunctive and descriptive norms surrounding sexual behaviors with increased HIV vulnerability. We used Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify network-level norms based on the proportion of alters' approval of the participant engaging in condomless sex, group sex, and use of drugs to enhance sex (i.e., injunctive norms) and alters' engagement in these behaviors (i.e., descriptive norms). We then used binomial regression analyses to examine associations between network-level norm profiles and individual-level HIV vulnerability from sex. The results of our LPA indicated that our sample experienced five distinct latent profiles of network-level norms: (1) low HIV vulnerability network norm, (2) moderately high HIV vulnerability network norm, (3) high HIV vulnerability network norm, (4) condomless sex dominant network norm, and (5) approval of drug use during sex dominant network norm. Condomless anal sex, group sex, and using drugs to enhance sex were positively and significantly associated with higher HIV vulnerability social network norm profiles, relative to low HIV vulnerability norm profiles. To mitigate Black SGM's HIV vulnerability, future HIV risk reduction strategies can consider using network-level intervention approaches such as opinion leaders, segmentation, induction, or alteration, through an intersectionality framework.

Excluding stock from riverbanks for environmental restoration: The influence of social norms, drought, and off-farm income on landholder behaviour

Social Norms and Risk Perception: Predictors of Distracted Driving Behavior Among Novice Adolescent Drivers

ABSTRACTAlthough social norms play an important role in smoking cessation, relatively little is known about the underlying mechanisms of influence of specific social norms on willingness to quit smoking. This study aimed to test the mediated role of smoking risk perception on the relationship between social norms (injunctive norms and descriptive norms) and willingness to quit smoking. A total of 340 smokers completed questionnaires about perceived descriptive norms and injunctive norms, smoking risk perception, and willingness to quit smoking and nicotine dependence. Mediation analysis shows that (1) descriptive norms, injunctive norms, and smoking risk perception were all predictors of the willingness to quit smoking and that (2) smoking risk perception completely mediated the predictive effect of injunctive norms on willingness to quit smoking and partially mediated the predictive effect of descriptive norms on willingness to quit smoking. Overall, these findings suggest that smoking risk perception is an important underlying internal mechanisms for explaining how descriptive norms and injunctive norms respectively influence smokers’ willingness to quit smoking.

Open online communities rely on social norms for behavior regulation, group cohesion, and sustainability. Research on the role of social norms online has mainly focused on one source of influence at a time, making it difficult to separate different normative influences and understand their interactions. In this study, we use the Focus Theory to examine interactions between several sources of normative influence in a Wikipedia sub-community: local descriptive norms, local injunctive norms, and norms imported from similar sub-communities. We find that exposure to injunctive norms has a stronger effect than descriptive norms, that the likelihood of performing a behavior is higher when both injunctive and descriptive norms are congruent, and that conflicting social norms may negatively impact pro-normative behavior. We contextualize these findings through member interviews, and discuss their implications for both future research on normative influence in online groups and the design of systems that support open collaboration.

Healthy and unhealthy social norms and food selection. Findings from a field-experiment

Consumers can process information containing social norms at different cognitive deliberation levels. This paper investigates the effect of cognitive deliberation for both descriptive and injunctive norms. The experimental study examines the consequences for attitudes and behavioral intentions of these two norm formulations under different levels of deliberation. Results show that (1) cognitive load limits the influence of both norm formulations, and (2) cognitive deliberation increases the effect of descriptive and decreases the effect of injunctive norms. The positive and negative thoughts made salient by the information are shown to lead to these consequences. Marketers therefore need to consider the context and channels in which social norms are communicated, as this can affect the motivation, ability, and/or opportunity of consumers to process the information. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the essence of the mutual influence of social and cultural values and norms. The research methodology is based on the application of general scientific methods of system analysis, as well as the theory of social networks; to clarify the essence of the mutual influence of social and cultural values and norms, the method of logical reconstruction was used. The scientific novelty of the results obtained consists in a comprehensive analysis of the specifics of the manifestation of the mutual influence of social and cultural values and norms. Conclusions. The entire modern global socio-cultural space is built on the network principle, and society is dominated by various network structures, the spread of which is due to the development of digital technologies, the emergence of which, in turn, is due to the needs of society and people to overcome spaces and various restrictions in communication and obtaining information. At the same time, each network structure has its own cultural dimension. Social networks are characterised by accessibility, globality, the presence of feedback, which indicates their constructive potential in the modern socio-cultural space. It is emphasised that the influence of social networks on culture is obvious – social networks have changed not only how people interact with each other, build relationships, consume information and make decisions, but also determined the mutual influence of social networks and culture. It has been concluded that in modern society social networks are a mechanism for preserving and simultaneously transmitting cultural values and norms, as well as for consolidating, self-organising and cultural identification of social groups. Social networks are changing cultural values and norms, manifested in intercultural and international communication, the way people interact with each other; perceptions of oneself and one's relationships with others. At the same time, cultural values influence social networks, dictating to them the need to comply with certain social norms.
 Keywords: social networks, network structures, digital technologies, cultural values, cultural norms.

The literature documents 2 related yet distinct social normative influences on adolescent drinking. Descriptive norms refer to perceptions of how much others engage in a particular behavior, whereas injunctive norms refer to the extent to which others approve of a particular behavior. Theoretical formulations suggest that whether descriptive or injunctive norms guide drinking behavior depends on cognitive factors related to executive functioning. Cognitive capacities, specifically inhibitory control (IC) and preplanning, were tested as moderators of the association between social norms and alcohol use using a longitudinal design and community sample of adolescents. This longitudinal study included 387 adolescents and 3 annual waves of data. Behavioral tasks assessed IC (Stop Signal Task) and preplanning (Tower of London) and social norms and drinking were assessed using self-report measures. Significant interactions were found for descriptive and injunctive norms with preplanning and descriptive norms with IC. As hypothesized, descriptive norms were stronger prospective predictors of alcohol use at low levels of cognitive preplanning, whereas injunctive norms were stronger prospective predictors at high levels of cognitive preplanning. Descriptive norms prospectively predicted alcohol use at high, but not at low levels of IC. These findings highlight the complexity of normative influences and suggest that descriptive and injunctive norms have differential effects on future drinking for individuals with different cognitive capacities.

Eat as they eat, not as they think. Descriptive but not injunctive social norm messages can increase fruit and vegetable intake

BackgroundIndividual achievement goals are influenced by the learning context, such as the classroom. In this social space, social norms emerge and shape motivation and behaviour. Classroom goal structures reflect injunctive norms (what is considered acceptable) and influence individual achievement goals. The role that descriptive norms (what others typically do or think) play in individual achievement goals is unclear. We propose that peer achievement goals reflect descriptive norms and additionally influence individual achievement goals.AimsWe aim to better understand contextual influences on individual student motivation by applying a social norms framework to study changes in individual achievement goals and acknowledge the role of peers.Sample and MethodsWe used longitudinal data from 4189 students from 169 classes at two time points after the transition to secondary school.ResultsWe calculated multilevel models to predict changes in individual mastery‐, performance‐approach, and performance‐avoidance goals. As Level‐2 predictors, class‐level classroom goal structures represented injunctive norms, while peer achievement goals represented descriptive norms. Individual achievement goals and individual‐level classroom goal structures were added on Level 1. Class‐level classroom goal structures related to changes in individual achievement goals only if peer achievement goals were not added. If added on the classroom level, peer achievement goals remained as a single Level‐2 predictor of changes in individual achievement goals.ConclusionWe demonstrated the key role that descriptive norms (reflected by peer achievement goals) play in individual achievement goals. The role of injunctive norms needs to be investigated further to enhance our understanding of how social norms shape individual student motivation.