Abstract
The evolution of social norms interventions for health promotion: Distinguishing norms correction and norms transformation.
Highlights
Even though several different theoretical perspectives exist on what social norms are and how they affect people’s practices [1], much contemporary research and practice in public and global health has adopted theory and terminology by Cialdini and colleagues [3], whose Focus Theory of Normative Conduct defined social norms as (1) one’s beliefs about what others in one’s group do, and (2) the extent to which one believes others as approving or disapproving of something
Drawing on Cialdini’s theory of how social norms affect behaviour and how they are defined, a stream of health promotion practice emerged in global and public health that aimed at addressing harmful social norms
At the beginning of the 2000s, interventions that targeted social norms sustaining the practice of female genital cutting (FGC) in West Africa offered an important contribution to addressing harmful practices in rural West African villages
Summary
Drawing on Cialdini’s theory of how social norms affect behaviour and how they are defined, a stream of health promotion practice emerged in global and public health that aimed at addressing harmful social norms. Researchers who studied the three-year community-led programme implemented in rural Senegal by the NGO Tostan suggested this model was effective in reducing FGC because it addressed existing social norms that were perceived as strongly sustaining the practice [6]. Their Community Empowerment Programme (CEP) – an example of what we called “norms transformation strategies” (NTS) – was different from the norm correction strategy described above in two regards. The literature gave to this process (through which group discussions expand to include a larger number of community members eventually challenging social norms) the name “organized diffusion” [7]
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