Activating and Aligning two Kinds of Norms in Persuasive Communications

Abstract

Communicators often try to reduce undesirable behavior in an audience by warning that the behavior is alarmingly prevalent. However, in the process of pointing out the regrettable frequency of the unwanted action, such warnings may send a mixed motivational message to the audience by simultaneously engaging the action of two types of social norms: injunctive norms, which can suppress undesirable action by describing what most people disapprove, and descriptive norms, which can stimulate undesirable action by describing what most people do. In one study, individuals whose attention was drawn to the widespread littering of others littered more, not less, as a consequence.