Table Of Contenti
NORMS IN THE WILD
ii
iii
NORMS
IN THE WILD
How to Diagnose, Measure,
and Change Social Norms
CRISTINA BICCHIERI
1
iv
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bicchieri, Cristina, author.
Title: Norms in the wild : how to diagnose, measure, and change
social norms / Cristina Bicchieri.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016022291 | ISBN 9780190622046 (hbk : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780190622053 (pbk : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Collective behavior. | Behavior modification. |
Social psychology. | Social norms.
Classification: LCC HM866 .B53 2017 | DDC 302.3/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022291
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
v
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xvii
1. Diagnosing Norms 1
2. Measuring Norms: Consensus and Conformity 50
3. Norm Change 106
4. Tools for Change 142
5. Trendsetters 163
Bibliography 209
Index 223
vi
vii
PREFACE
In theory, there is no difference between theory and
practice. In practice, there is.
Yogi Berra
I was invited, in November 2012, to present the Descartes
lectures at the University of Tilburg. By that time, I had been
deeply involved for a number of years in a project that aimed
at integrating my theory of social norms with UNICEF’s per-
spective on social change, and I decided to present on this ex-
perience. This book expands those three early lectures, but it
retains the original flavor of a condensed attempt to spell out
what norms are, how to measure and change them, and the
theory and practical tools that lie beneath this project.
Many of the questions I ask and the answers I propose were
motivated by discussions with field practitioners who wanted,
above all, real- world guidance. I have tried to convince them,
and my present readers, that such guidance is useless without an
understanding of the ideas that motivate it, and of the theoreti-
cal tools that ground the choice of selecting and implementing
viii
viii | PREFACE
practical interventions. What follows is a story of how my con-
nection with people daily engaged in solving hard social prob-
lems and putting great effort into the discovery of practical, ef-
fective tools has opened my mind and helped me sharpen ideas
that needed much clearing up to be used “in the wild.”
It all started in the winter of 2008, when I was asked to give a
talk at the UNICEF headquarters in New York. A few members
had read my 2006 book on social norms, and were interested
in exploring possible applications of my social norms theory to
violations of human rights across the world. I went in prepared
to give an academic presentation, and I was pleasantly surprised
to realize that the questions asked were not at all academic. The
questions ranged from “how can we tell that a common practice
is a social norm?” to “what are the indicators we should use?” and
“what does it mean to say that norms influence behavior?” These
novel questions forced me to think hard about the possible ap-
plications of my ideas on social norms to real- life cases.
When I mentioned the importance of social expectations
in identifying norms, my audience was eager to understand the
difference between expectations of how other people will behave
in specific situations (empirical expectations) and expectations
about what other people think one should do in those situa-
tions (normative expectations). This distinction is important,
and not well understood in the social norms literature, which
typically stresses the actions usually or “normally” performed
by people, the personal attitudes they have toward such actions,
and the social sanctions that may follow transgressions, but not
the conditions that make these actions normal, the application
of measures of attitudes, and when these sanctions are relevant.
What we interpret “from the outside” as usual behavior may or
may not be conceived by the actors themselves as normal and
usual. Sanctions have value only if they are expected by their
targets, and the concept of attitude is too general to be very
useful in measuring normative behavior.
ix
PREFACE | ix
Introducing the idea of social expectations has several
advantages. Not only does it ground behavior on the actual
beliefs of actors, but also lets us take the presence or absence
of expectations as indicators of different collective behaviors.
Measuring social expectations, and their influence on behav-
ior, allows us to identify different types of collective behaviors
that may otherwise be confused. Think of child marriage: is
it a custom, a social norm, a simple convention, a response to
the moral imperative of protecting one’s child, or a reaction to
difficult economic conditions? We may observe identical be-
haviors, but the reasons behind them may significantly vary.
Indeed, the same actions may be independent or interdepen-
dent, and interventions aimed at successfully changing behav-
ior must first understand the nature of the collective behavior
in question.
Another advantage of employing social expectations is that
they are easily measurable. We can always tell if they exist. Yet
it is not enough to assess that expectations exist. For a social
norm to exist, social expectations must matter. Our choices,
in other words, must be influenced by our having expectations
about what others do and think we should do. Measurement,
again, is important in determining if and how much expec-
tations matter, and whether some matter more than others.
Norms have causal power, and measurement helps identify the
ways in which they influence behavior.
My original audience agreed with the idea that people
follow social norms because they have expectations about how
others behave and what they consider appropriate. Yet the ap-
parently simple idea of conditional preference raised a host of
new questions. “If one prefers to do something because one ex-
pects friends and neighbors to do the same, what motivates this
preference?” “Is it imitation, the desire to coordinate with others,
or fear of being judged and punished if we behave differently?”
“How can we tell the difference?” These questions are practical
