The New Year: Famous (or infamous) for New Year’s resolutions. For many Americans, it’s a time of change. Whether “New year, new me” means weight loss, saving money, better mental health practices, or more time with the family, many people actively make a decision to make a change that seems a little more appropriate since “it’s that time of year again” and “everyone’s doing it.” Some people keep their resolutions, others don’t, but many are excited by the idea of making a positive change in their lives along with countless others.
It turns out, social norms can work along the lines of a brand new change that everyone’s trying, too! In fact, the audience of the message may not even know the result of the change yet, just that the change is happening. These norms are called dynamic norms. We can think of dynamic norms as “drawing attention to a norm over time (Sparkman & Waltman, 2017)” instead of in its current state, a static norm. Take, for example, saving money. Hypothetically, we could see a norms message saying that “40% of Americans that make New Year’s resolution say they make an effort to save money as their resolution.” However, Sparkman & Waltman’s dynamic norms research tell us it is more effective to say “40% of Americans that make New Year’s resolutions say they are now starting to make an effort to save money as their resolution.” We can write messages that say “In recent years, 40% of Americans have changed their habits to save more money than they otherwise would for their resolution,” to express change happening currently (2017).
What’s the big deal? In the case of social norms, isn’t it the same thing to say that a group of people does something versus a group of people is doing something? A 2017 study by Sparkman & Waltman shows that exposure to dynamic norms increased interest in eating less meat in three experiments and doubled the percentage of patrons who ordered a meatless lunch in another. In another experiment, a dynamic norm intervention about water conservation reduced laundry loads by nearly 30% versus 10% from a static norm intervention. One difference is that collective behavior change becomes more salient and motivating. A more novel difference comes from a concept called “preconformity.”
Preconformity is when “people anticipate a changed future world and increase the perceived importance of a behavior to other people, particularly if people see change in others’ behavior as reflecting effort (Sparkman & Waltman, 2017).” In a way, dynamic norms help people identify the most current trends and get on board for what people seem to think is a pretty good idea. And if those people look, sound, and act like me, maybe I can do it, too! Not only is it popular, it’s possible!
But before we go rewriting our social norms messages into gerunds and active language, we need to keep some things in mind. First, it should hold some value and importance. If 40% of people are starting to listen to hip-hop instead of pop during their workouts, but there’s no health benefit to it, there’s very little value for someone to switch up their music playlist if they’re really into Ariana Grande instead of Kendrick Lamar. Additionally, if the dynamic norm addresses a “very unfamiliar behavior” (Composting toilets, anyone?), it might make the audience focus on the counternormative status of the behavior.
This New Year, 100% of the NSNC staff are beginning to read and talk about dynamic norms more than ever before! All of us are starting to change our behavior to be more observant of these norms in intervention campaigns! So take a look at your own messages and see if a dynamic norm could work in your favor. For more information, check out the full paper listed below.
Sparkman, G., Walton, G. M. (2017). Dynamic Norms Promote Sustainable Behavior, Even if It Is Counternormative. Psycological Science, 28, 1663-1674.
