How Social Norms Flip
Applying Moral Persuasion to some Contemporary Problems
Authors
There was a time when drunk driving, smoking indoors, and stigmatisation of same-sex marriages were widely accepted – they were the norm in the vast majority of societies. Today, however, they are considered inappropriate, unacceptable and come with a mix of legal restrictions. But why? How exactly did this change come about? Indeed, the transformation cannot solely be attributed to legislation – lawmaking without purpose does not lead to substantive reform – rather, it was the expectations and perceptions held by society about what was considered ‘normal’ that really paved the way for this kind of change.
A social norm is not just a habit or commonly observed behaviour, but rather is influenced by other people’s behaviours. People primarily follow social norms because they expect others to do the same, or because they feel obligated to do so since they believe others expect them to conform. This separates social norms from individual preferences such as customs or habits, as it involves society as a whole. People conform to norms to avoid punishment or disapproval, and to be considered ‘normal’.
Cristina Bicchieri’s book, Norms in the Wild, is useful for analysing social norms further. She argues that social norms differ from regular norms since individuals prefer to follow social norms conditionally: if they believe that people in their immediate social circle are complying with it (empirical expectations), and second, if people in their social circle expect others to comply with it (normative expectations). In a sense, she is distinguishing between independent and interdependent behaviour. If the behaviour is interdependent, simply altering incentives or costs will not change a person’s behaviour, as it is dependent on numerous factors, such as empirical and normative expectations. This is why only when these shared expectations can change, can individual behaviour shift along with it, meaning changing empirical expectations is the first step in eliminating or shifting a social norm.
On the other hand, Robert Cialdini explains social norms and compliance in a different way. He distinguishes between two: descriptive norms (what an individual believes others do) and injunctive norms (what individuals believe others approve of). He claims that norm change is sustained reliably when both these signals are met. This insinuates that norm change could fail through direct government intervention, such as highlighting the issues with the undesirable behaviour, as this could reinforce descriptive norms. Thus, from Cialdini’s perspective, norm change requires communicating that a norm is both abnormal and not socially approvable.
Understanding how social norms change is essential for maintaining effective public policy. This piece will explore the three mechanisms that primarily alter norms: lawmaking, moral persuasion, and awareness campaigns, and how they all work in tandem to shift norms.
The Case of Drunk Driving in the UK and the US
To begin with, let us examine the case of drunk driving. In the late 1980s, the movement to end drunk driving seemed unlikely, and many considered it not to be a problem at all. However, in the present day, driving under the influence is considered a serious crime and danger. So how was this norm flipped?
In this case, lawmaking and awareness were utilised. Many people in the UK and the U.S started movements opposing this norm, forcing the government to consider drunk driving prevention as a greater policy priority. This was due to the fact that by the late 1970s and 1980s, the usage of cars had become widespread. Government data showed that increasingly higher proportions of road fatalities involved intoxicated drivers, many of whom killed pedestrians or passengers.
For example, in the US in 1982, over half of car-related fatalities were due to drunk driving, and many similar trends were seen in the UK as well. The fact that drunk driving caused many innocents to die illustrated collective danger. As a result, the UK government, for example, introduced a formal legal limit. This created a concrete benchmark for enforcement, resulting in the government deploying mobile breathalysers, increasing the chances of detecting drunk driving. As curtailing this behaviour became more important, so were the sanctions and punishments levied on the individuals committing these offences. In 1988, the UK Road Traffic Offenders Act had a maximum prison sentence of five years, and from 2022, the maximum was life imprisonment. Clearly, the increase in risk of detection and the role of harsher punishments had some effect; over the decades, the fatalities caused by drunk driving fell immensely.
Does this completely explain the change in this norm? On the contrary, there were two other factors: moral persuasion and social awareness. Most economic theory believes that all individuals in a society are rational decision makers – they weigh the costs and benefits of committing a certain action. However, costs and benefits are extremely subjective to an individual. Additionally, not everyone can be a rational decision maker. Alcoholics, for example, may have foundational differences in what they consider to be a ‘benefit’ and ‘cost’ compared with the rest of the population. What influences these moral costs is the normality of the crime or the activity being committed. This ties back into the unique aspect of social norms – the public’s perception of them. If drunk driving is more prevalent in a community, an offender will still believe they are normal if they commit the crime. Their perception of morality is not altered, and they have less of an incentive to refrain from such actions compared to an individual in a low-crime community. Many governments proclaimed the dangers of drunk driving in various media. Newspapers, TV, and billboards were all opportunities to raise awareness about the problem.
Many of these messages underscored the potential health risks, dangers and legal trouble that one could face if caught driving under the influence. They also highlighted the abnormality of the act, demonstrating the shamefulness of the act. As awareness grew, a sort of common knowledge was created around drunk driving, creating a powerful social stigma around the act. This effectively meant that moral persuasion allowed the moral costs of drunk driving to be brought to light, adding onto the already existing criminal and legal costs. Consequently, more people were disincentivised to drive under the influence since, in their minds of rational decision-making, they realised that the costs outweighed the benefits. As the public condemnation surrounding drunk driving grew, so did the risks of getting caught. People understood the potential shame and embarrassment that awaited them if they were arrested and processed. It would not fit in with society’s definition of normalcy. This illustrates a key point. Moral persuasion and awareness play much larger roles in influencing social norms than one gives them credit for. Lawmaking alone would not simply transform people’s behaviour, as the population still feels little to no moral cost in committing these acts. By influencing public perception, the government can naturally create a deterrence toward that norm, which also makes its own laws more efficacious.
How the Smoking Indoors Norm Flipped
Similarly, smoking indoors is another common social norm that was widespread not too long ago. Despite some research showing the potential health concerns, the general public was unaffected. It was only in 1964 when the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health was published that there was any real recognition of the harms. This famous and publicised report linked smoking formally to heart disease and lung cancer. While this did play an important role, the decisive shift occurred in the 1980s when research on the dangers of second-hand smoke was exposed. The ensuing publicity and awareness campaigns achieved their goal: convincing the public that indoor smoking was not just a personal choice, but a collective harm. This once again reinforces the uniqueness of social norms. Since many people started to realise the implications of second-hand smoke, the general public became vastly opposed to this kind of behaviour, reducing its normality. People now expect others to disapprove of this action. Therefore, this heightened the moral cost of the behaviour, making individuals less likely to commit the act.
The Same-sex Marriage Norm Change
Another example of a widespread social norm change is the acceptance of same-sex marriage. In this regard, the transformation should be widely credited to role modelling and moral persuasion rather than deterrence-based lawmaking. Similar to the previous examples, for much of the twentieth century, this concept was stigmatised and considered both unacceptable and criminalised. Although, unlike drunk driving or indoor smoking, criminalisation confirmed many people’s beliefs. The norm was more about personal judgment of what was considered as ‘deviance’. There was no shared belief that harm actually existed, and since most people opposed it, there was no moral cost, meaning the law could not raise costs without first changing expectations. This social norm was unique in this regard. While drunk driving and smoking were already on the downturn, enforcement and deterrence worked there. However, here behaviour and stigma would persist despite attempts at deterrence as the vast majority of the population saw same sex-marriage as abnormal, and hence incurred little moral cost in opposing it.
While there were attempts to normalise same-sex relationships (Sexual Offences Act 1967 – decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men), this certainly did not eliminate and normalise same-sex marriages. Rather, the real change came in 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association no longer considered homosexuality a mental illness and removed it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Since the APA was a reputable organisation, choosing to remove homosexuality had a profound effect, since it reframed it from a pathology to a normal extension of human behaviour. This was a moral reclassification, and it appealed to many citizens who began to change their views on the behaviour itself. Surprisingly, this reclassification was also backed up by the Church, a famously opposed institution. They, and many other denominations, moved from a view of condemnation to tolerance of homosexuals and homosexual relationships. Although they maintained their definition of a marriage – a union between a man and a woman, they were strongly opposed to discrimination against homosexuals. Thus, the Church’s decision to be socially accepting of homosexual relationships eroded the social stigma surrounding the group, especially within many religious communities.
The APA’s decision was the beginning of the end in healthcare’s official participation in the social stigmatisation of homosexuality. An individual would reconsider, for if homosexuality was no longer considered an illness, and if they did not accept the outdated biblical interdiction on it, what was wrong with being gay? If there was nothing wrong, then is it not wrong to continue to stigmatise and be prejudiced against them? Individuals logically then decided that others would begin to think this practice was normal. Once again, the moral costs were raised through moral persuasion. The average person would realise that it was unjust to continue to persecute homosexuals, and instead should help them openly live their lives. The second major factor was awareness campaigns. In the UK, organisations such as Stonewall tried to combat social stigma through media engagement and education. This was essential to building normalcy around gay relationships. Through this, a larger audience emerged who were willing to conform to same-sex relationships, influencing government legislation toward this norm. In rational decision-making terms, as awareness grew, there was greater moral cost in opposing the movement rather than conforming to it, as it had grown increasingly more normal.
Can Norms Help Us Make Roads Safer?
A more contemporary example highlights that the same mechanisms can be applied, even in the present. Wrong-side driving in Bangalore persists primarily due to empirical expectations remaining unchanged. This is because although there are laws against this activity, it still remains socially tolerable. Enforcement is quite inconsistent, and many violations are rarely punished. This signals to the drivers (from their empirical expectations), that other people in their social group are not complying with the policy put in place. This is why, to shift this norm, the government must not focus on regulation or lawmaking, but target awareness campaigns that directly affect empirical expectations. These campaigns should emphasise the abnormality of the act, stating that “most drivers follow the rules”. However, the government should not aimlessly spread awareness of the act, since, as Cialdini states, it can unintentionally raise the normalcy of the social norm, essentially undermining the government’s entire strategy. With this in mind, I believe that the government can successfully eliminate the issue of wrong-side driving, however, only during the daytime. During the night, the context of the situation flips. During the daytime, even without government interference, there are strong normative expectations that the majority of drivers follow. They know most people expect them to follow the rules, and they do so because of the number of people driving; congestion, visibility and the perceived idea of enforcement all play a role.
On the contrary, during the nighttime, both the empirical and normative expectations become diminished (the former factors all playing a role in this phenomenon). This explains why stricter fines or penalties have little impact, as the majority of fatal accidents due to these conditions occurs in the night (around 20% of fatal road accidents in India occur during the night hours). As a result, intervention should be focused on restoring empirical expectations at night. I believe that rather than random city-wide concentration, the government should concentrate enforcement at known wrong turn hotspots. For example, flyover exits or U-turns. Additionally, an increase in signage appealing to the moral consciousness of drivers should also be implemented in order to change their normative expectations.
Flipping the Norm of Playing Loud Sounds in Public Places
A similar logic applies to another contemporary problem: playing videos in an excessively loud manner in public. This is a unique situation as there is no current legislation or law against this type of behaviour. In addition, implementing any kind of ban or restriction would likely fail, as the vast majority of people do not see this behaviour as inherently harmful, but rather inconvenient. There is widespread contempt for this kind of behaviour, but it remains largely private due to its trivial nature. This indicates something interesting. Since discontent is largely private, most people committing this act are completely unaware or uninterested that what they are doing is inconvenient or irritating for others. Following both Bicchieri and Cialdini’s frameworks, we can see that there is a complete lack of normative expectations, or injunctive norms. Most people watching videos excessively loudly do not believe that others expect them to comply with their idea of etiquette.
Under our proposed framework, the government could effectively target normative expectations through awareness and moral persuasion, and then move on to regulation. The awareness could be spread once again through increased signage depicting the same message or targeted advertisement campaigns. If and when this expectation is established, the government could then move to soft-institutional rules or bans. For example, if one were travelling in a metro or any form of public transport, they would find quiet-zone areas where this kind of behaviour would be strictly prohibited. Failure to comply with these policies would result in light fines, as the action would not be considered ‘immoral’, but would still be breaking the rules of the establishment. While this does seem perfectly reasonable in theory, I believe it is one of the hardest norms to flip. The inherent issue lies in the fact that the action itself is not severe enough to be considered harmful or immoral, but rather considered a minor nuisance. As such, people may be less hesitant to follow the rules or even take them seriously, as they would consider it frivolous.
With everything in mind, these cases suggest that norms change primarily through a mix of social awareness and government intervention. From the three mechanisms discussed, it seems lawmaking and deterrence is mostly effective when a norm is weakening and has tangible harms. In the cases of drunk driving and indoor smoking, there was a growing movement against these actions, which allowed lawmakers to capitalise on. Moral persuasion and awareness had reduced the ‘normalcy’ and enforcement increased the costs of committing to these norms, as detection and incarceration became signals that emphasised the abnormality of these norms. With these cases, one learns that the law cannot create morality in the individual’s eyes, however in the right circumstances, it amplifies it.
On the contrary, moral persuasion and awareness campaigns appear to be the most consistent and universal catalyst required for norm change. Since social norms incorporate how others view a certain behaviour, these two factors work by reshaping what is considered ‘normal’ and do not necessarily focus on material harm. These mechanisms operate by informing an individual about the moral costs of an action, but also how others would perceive it, essentially targeting both the empirical and normative expectations of individuals. Awareness campaigns translate private, obscure information to public knowledge. Through awareness campaigns, individuals will change their behaviour if they believe others are also likely to do so. As a result, moral persuasion and awareness campaigns succeed where simple legislation does not – they can directly influence public perception of a norm, instead of just trying to deter people from participating in that norm. Additionally, moral persuasion fixes the issue with rational choice theory by influencing cost – benefit calculations that can exceed simple legal sanctions.
In conclusion, while social norms can evolve independent of any real conscious effort (due to cultural shifts), a variety of these cases illustrate that this is rarely the case. There is usually a driving force behind social norm flipping through effective public policy usage. This emerges when the three mechanisms operate as a cohesive unit: moral persuasion and awareness campaigns changing public perception and building the correct environment so that the law can effectively consolidate the shift.
Agastya is a Grade 11 student at The International School Bangalore with a strong academic interest in economics and public policy.