Normative Social Influence Across Cultures: The impact of injunctive and descriptive social norms in message-based persuasion.

Abstract

This research seeks to understand how normative appeals differentially affect behavioral change across cultures. Two types of social information commonly used in persuasion include descriptive norms (i.e., information regarding the frequency of specific behaviors in a situation) and injunctive norms (i.e., forms of social coercion that tell people what ought to be done). A combination of three experiments and a field study systematically examined the effectiveness of different types of social norms in cultures that vary on their strengths of norms—or tightness looseness. In general, normative appeals differentially affected behavioral change across cultures. More specifically, both injunctive norm and descriptive norms were more effective than the control in influencing behavioral intentions in a tight culture versus a loose culture (e.g., China versus the U.S.) (study 1). In loose cultures, injunctive norm appeals showed a “boomerang” effect, whereby exposure to injunctive norms decreased, rather than increased the amount of donation compared to control (study 2). Further, in loose cultures, the injunctive norm message enhanced the strength of the threat to freedom and elicited psychological reactance, which in turn decreased their intention to follow the advocated behavior (study 3). The results provided evidence that psychological reactance contributed to injunctive norm’s “boomerang” effect. Finally, a field study (study 4) showed injunctive norm messages represented to be a promising technique for “nudging” water conservation behavior. Unexpectedly, the results showed that an injunctive norm message coercive words messages were more effective in promoting water-saving behavior than injunctive norm message without coercive words. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.