Witnessing change: Dynamic norms help resolve diverse barriers to personal change

Abstract

Recent research has found that dynamic norms—information about collective change in behavior—can promote meaningful personal behavior change, even if that behavior is not currently the norm. Through what psychological processes do dynamic norms operate? We theorized that, when others change, it can lead observers to infer that whatever factors had loomed large as barriers to change do not, in fact, prevent change. If so, dynamic norms may alter diverse salient mechanisms of personal change, and encourage behavior change in diverse contexts. Investigating four domains—smokers' intention to quit, dietary choice, sleep-related behavior, and men's identification as feminist—Experiments 1–4 found that dynamic norms affected three well-established mechanisms of personal behavior change across contexts: the belief that personal change is possible (increased self-efficacy), the belief that change is important to others (injunctive norms), and the belief that change is compatible with one's social identity. In each case, change in the psychological process also statistically mediated change in personal interest and intentions to change. Experiment 5 tested our hypothesis that psychological barriers that loom large would be remedied most. Manipulating the salience of all three barriers within a single context, we found that dynamic norms had a larger impact on salient than less salient barriers. The results suggest that dynamic norms can help resolve diverse psychological barriers to encourage personal change, especially salient barriers. They may thus be a particularly robust source of social influence across contexts.