Social norms interventions work by communicating to a target audience that other people are engaging in the desired behavior, or will approve of you if you do the behavior (or conversely that other people are avoiding an undesired behavior, or will disapprove of you if you do it). Social norms interventions have been used to address a number of social and environmental problems with positive effects that have been documented to persist over time. Key considerations in social norms interventions are that they are believable, utilize credible sources, and reference meaningful groups. Importantly, social norms interventions are often most effective at changing the behavior of those who frequently engage in undesired behaviors (e.g., consuming electricity) or who infrequently engage in desired behaviors (e.g., recycling). This chapter includes sample messages and advice for successfully implementing a social norms intervention. The process by which social norms affect behavior and the implications for theory and practice are also discussed.

A poor fit exists between the behavioral results of the Bergquist et al. (2021) article not just with the results of the single-piece-of-litter effect they failed to replicate, but also with the findings of much other norms research, as well as with the findings of the article's own psychological processes study. All the data can be ordered, however, by registering certain features of the report's behavioral studies that create high levels of psychological arousal, which then instigate perceptual and decisional narrowing.

Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens' decisions and outcomes(1). Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time intervals(2). The lack of comparability of such individual investigations limits their potential to inform policy. Here, to address this limitation and accelerate the pace of discovery, we introduce the megastudy-a massive field experiment in which the effects of many different interventions are compared in the same population on the same objectively measured outcome for the same duration. In a megastudy targeting physical exercise among 61,293 members of an American fitness chain, 30 scientists from 15 different US universities worked in small independent teams to design a total of 54 different four-week digital programmes (or interventions) encouraging exercise. We show that 45% of these interventions significantly increased weekly gym visits by 9% to 27%; the top-performing intervention offered microrewards for returning to the gym after a missed workout. Only 8% of interventions induced behaviour change that was significant and measurable after the four-week intervention. Conditioning on the 45% of interventions that increased exercise during the intervention, we detected carry-over effects that were proportionally similar to those measured in previous research(3-6). Forecasts by impartial judges failed to predict which interventions would be most effective, underscoring the value of testing many ideas at once and, therefore, the potential for megastudies to improve the evidentiary value of behavioural science.

Disinformation in politics, advertising, and mass communications has proliferated in recent years. Few counterargumentation strategies have proven effective at undermining a deceptive message over time. This article introduces the Poison Parasite Counter (PPC), a cognitive-science-based strategy for durably countering deceptive communications. The PPC involves inserting a strong (poisonous) counter-message, just once, into a close replica of a deceptive rival's original communication. In parasitic fashion, the original communication then "hosts" the counter-message, which is recalled on each reexposure to the original communication. The strategy harnesses associative memory to turn the original communication into a retrieval cue for a negating counter-message. Seven experiments (N = 3,679 adults) show that the PPC lastingly undermines a duplicitous rival's original communication, influencing judgments of communicator honesty and favorability as well as real political donations.

Social norm represents one of the most interdisciplinary and important concepts in the behavioral sciences. We reviewed recent research examining the effects of social norms on climate change-related behaviors, identifying relevant evidence in five behavioral domains: eco-friendly consumer choices, energy conservation, reduction/ re-use/recycling, sustainable food choices, and water conservation. We discuss this research as it pertains to a set of theoretically important questions that emerged as themes across these studies and discuss various future research directions as they relate to each theme. Overall, the recent evidence is quite robust in demonstrating influential effects of social norms on an array of behaviors relevant to climate change.

In the battle against the spread of COVID-19, contract tracing is widely seen as a crucial requirement (www.preventepidemics.org) to reopen society. Since its first call with a COVID-19 patient ("case") on March 27, the Contact Tracing program at Penn State Health, previously described in this journal,1Koetter P, Pelton M, Gonzalo J, et al. Implementation and process of a COVID-19 contact tracing initiative: leveraging health professional students to extend the workforce during a pandemic. Am J Infect Control. 2020;48:1451–1456.Google Scholar has completed calls with 87% of all cases. In the past few weeks, as the performance of other programs has been reported, it appears that our contact tracers are unusually successful. In neighboring Lancaster County, with demographics similar to ours, calls with only 48% of cases are being completed.2Hawkes J Only half of people identified for COVID-19 exposure in Lancaster County may be isolating.Lancaster Online. 2020; (Available at: https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/only-half-of-people-identified-for-covid-19-exposure-in-lancaster-county-may-be-isolating/article_96705862-b0d3-11ea-a6e9-ffb04fac09fb.html. Accessed November 8, 2020)Google Scholar In Massachusetts, which has one of the country's most established tracing programs, only 60% of attempted calls are answered.3Otterman S N.Y.C. Hired 3,000 Workers for Contact Tracing. It's Off to a Slow Start. New York Times, New York, NY2020Google Scholar In New York City, only 42% of people with COVID-19 gave information about close contacts to tracers,3Otterman S N.Y.C. Hired 3,000 Workers for Contact Tracing. It's Off to a Slow Start. New York Times, New York, NY2020Google Scholar whereas Penn State Health's success rate in this regard is 62.5% since its inception. While we recognize there may be other factors that can impact these rates, such as racial, ethic, and other demographic differences in the callers and call recipients, we believe that part of performance difference stems from the scripting tactics we have used. We based our calling script on evidence from randomized trials in the fields of behavioral economics and persuasion science. We present them here for use by others as we are concerned that, as contact tracing is scaled nationwide, it may be significantly less effective than it could otherwise be. Below, we highlight in italics how our script differs from one suggested for use nationally by The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), and briefly explain how incorporating each persuasion-relevant tactic may explain the difference in performance. Hello, my name is _______ and I'm calling from _______. I am calling today because we are closely monitoring the outbreak of respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus (called COVID-19). We have identified you as potentially being sick. Can you first please confirm the following information? [Confirm name matches] Thank you. Can you please assist in providing some additional information so that we may understand your risk and potentially enroll you in public health monitoring? I am going to ask you to think back over each day while you have been sick to remember what you did each day. This will help us figure out who you may have been around, and who else might get sick. If you are having a hard time remembering, sometimes it is helpful to look back at a calendar, or on your phone for messages sent on each day, or even at your credit card receipts. Hi, this is _____ calling from Penn State Health (Designed to incorporate the tactics of conveying expertise and trustworthiness of a health care provider and University, on the one hand, which increases a communicator's influence and enhancing feelings of unity of place, on the other, which increases survey participation4Edwards ML Dillman DA Smyth JD An experimental test of the effects of survey sponsorship on internet and mail survey response.Public Opin Quarterly. 2014; 78: 734-750Crossref Scopus (30) Google Scholar). I'm not sure if you've been told before but unfortunately, the results of your COVID or Coronavirus test were positive, meaning that you were infected with the virus at some point. Can I ask, how are you doing? How are you holding out in this crisis? (Designed to incorporate the tactic of enhancing rapport, which increases compliance with medical professionals requests5Zolnierek KB Dimatteo MR Physician communication and patient adherence to treatment: a meta-analysis.Med Care. 2009; 47: 826-834Crossref PubMed Scopus (1650) Google Scholar).I'm not sure if someone told you that other people will be calling, but I work with infection control and my team's job is to talk to people who have been diagnosed with COVID and find out all of the people who they have been in contact with, so we can get those people to quarantine themselves.This is not mandated by law, so you are free not to be involved in this (Designed to incorporate the tactic of reducing perceived threats to personal autonomy that, using similar wording, doubled request compliance over 32 studies6Carpenter CJ A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of the "but you are free" compliance-gaining technique.Commun Studies. 2012; 64: 6-17Crossref Scopus (50) Google Scholar), but this process is very important to help us stop the disease from spreading and has been used to stop many outbreaks in the past (Designed to incorporate the tactic of demonstrating social proof, in which people follow the lead of multiple successful others7Borman GD Rozek CS Pyne J Hanselman P Reappraising academic and social adversity improves middle school students' academic achievement, behavior, and well-being.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019; 116: 16286-16291Crossref PubMed Scopus (31) Google Scholar). This process is one of the only things we can do to stop the spread of this virus, so your help is essential. Most importantly, your privacy is our high priority and your information is completely confidential. If you agree to help, we will reach out to people and places you've been in contact with and just tell them that they have been exposed to someone without telling them who. Most people contact many people each day so it's very unlikely they'll identify you (Designed to incorporate the tactic of reducing privacy concerns which, if not addressed, appear to undercut compliance with contact tracing3Otterman S N.Y.C. Hired 3,000 Workers for Contact Tracing. It's Off to a Slow Start. New York Times, New York, NY2020Google Scholar).If you agree to help, we will reach out to the people and places you've been in contact with to tell them they were exposed and help them get testing and a doctor's note, if needed. We would also like to talk to you about your own quarantining measures and ways that we may be able to help (Designed to incorporate the tactic of reciprocity, in which people feel obligated to help to those who seek to help them and their close others8Oliver A Reciprocity and the Art of Behavioural Public Policy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge2019Crossref Scopus (13) Google Scholar). Do you have any questions so far?Ok, the next step is for us to talk about the people and places you may have been in contact with. I know the questions will feel invasive, like a police investigation. But this detective work is essential for doing all we can to stop the spread of this virus, so I really appreciate your help (Designed to incorporate the tactic of enhancing source credibility, in which a communicator points to a drawback before advancing to a request9Ward A Brenner L Accentuate the negative: the positive effects of negative acknowledgment.Psychol Sci. 2006; 17: 959-962Crossref PubMed Scopus (27) Google Scholar). Is that okay with you? We fully recognize that we have not tested our scripting, in a randomized controlled trial, against the ASTHO script or any other script, so it is possible that our script is not actually superior. However, the ASTHO script includes only information, though decades of behavioral economics and persuasion science research suggest that specific additions to an information-only script can markedly improve performance. These behavioral strategies are summarized in a recent report, co-authored by Dr. Cialdini, published by the Societal Experts Action Network, an activity of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, entitled "Encouraging Adoption of Protective Behaviors to Mitigate the Spread of COVID-19: Strategies for Behavior Change (2020)."10Encouraging Adoption of Protective Behaviors to Mitigate the Spread of COVID-19: Strategies for Behavior Change. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, DC2020Google Scholar Given how simple these changes are to make and the strength of the underlying science, incorporating these tactics into existing scripts, or formally testing these and similarly proven scripting tactics, should be given serious consideration. We present this in the spirit of quality improvement. The Institute of Medicine's Crossing the Quality Chasm noted that it takes 17 years, on average, for new knowledge generated by randomized controlled trials to be incorporated into practice11Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. National Academy Press, Washington, DC2001Google Scholar. Given the urgency of limiting morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 while simultaneously re-opening society, along with the widely agreed impact that contact tracing may have, we are hopeful that these scientifically grounded insights can be implemented much more quickly.

If you really want to get something done, you've got three options: Do it yourself, pay top dollar—or forbid your teenager to do it. You probably recognize the truth of that adage from your own teenage years. Imposing authority can be counterproductive because teenagers tend to resist such attempts at control. Nothing illustrates the boomerang quality of parental pressure on adolescent behavior quite as clearly as a phenomenon known as the “Romeo and Juliet effect.” The term refers to Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, the ill-fated teen characters who defied, with tragic consequences, all parental attempts to keep them apart. But does this happen in real life? In research done with 140 Colorado teenage couples, parental interference made the pairs feel greater love and desire for marriage. As the interference intensified, so did the love experience. When the interference weakened, romantic feelings cooled.

It is through the influence process that people generate and manage change. As such, it is important to understand fully the workings of the influence processes that produce compliance with requests for change. Fortunately, a vast body of scientific evidence exists on how, when, and why people comply with influence attempts. From this formidable body of work, one can extract six universal principles of influence that generate compliance in the widest range of circumstances. Reciprocation states that people are more willing to comply with requests (for favors, services, information, concessions, etc.) from those who have provided such things first. Commitment/Consistency states that people are more willing to be moved in a particular direction if they see it as consistent with an existing commitment. Authority states that people are more willing to follow the directions or recommendations of a communicator to whom they attribute relevant expertise. Social Proof states that people are more willing to take a recommended action if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others, are taking it. Scarcity states that people find objects and opportunities more attractive to the degree that they are scarce, rare, or dwindling in availability. Finally, Liking states that people prefer to say yes to those they like, such as those who are similar to them and who have complimented them.

We present a theoretical rationale and supporting studies revealing how unethical leader behavior fosters an unethical climate within workgroups that increases member turnover intentions and malfeasance. Drawing on the attraction–selection–attrition model of organizational behavior, we propose a selective attrition effect whereby unethical leader behavior results in the retention of group members who are more comfortable with dishonesty and, consequently, more likely to engage in unethical behavior toward their group. In two experiments, exposure to unethical leader behavior (vs. ethical leader behavior) increased group members’ likelihood of choosing to leave the group. Members who chose to remain in a group with an unethical leader were more likely than those who chose to leave to cheat their group in a subsequent task. A two time-period survey replicated these findings and identified psychological distress as the mechanism driving group members’ turnover intentions. This research extends our understanding of the complex relationships between unethical leadership and follower turnover intentions, psychological distress, and malfeasance. We contribute to the behavioral ethics literature by identifying a previously underappreciated form of selective attrition that produces internal costs to groups and organizations, independent of reputational consequences and whether the unethicality is publicized.

Climate change is the most pressing problem that we face, or have ever faced. Science tells us how severe this problem is and what effect it is going to have on our planet. Many campaigns have been tried without any real success to change this. There also seems to be a very severe disconnect between the reported attitudes of those who do believe in climate change and want to do something, and their subsequent actions. The authors consider cognitive and social biases, and how people maintain that warm glow of optimism in the light of compelling scientific evidence that spells out the devastating effects of climate change. They discuss certain distinct sets of cognitive processes, and the difficulty with much of the psychological work underpinning climate change campaigns, and carbon labelling and all that great advice about reducing carbon footprint, is that this basic fact has not been recognised.

142 words) Democracy requires the free and full exchange of ideas. However, asymmetrical reach in mass communications due to disparities in communicators’ resources or power can lead to imbalances in who is heard, regardless of the validity of their ideas. The Poison Parasite Counter (PPC) involves inserting a strong (poisonous) counter-message, just once, into a replica of a rival’s communication. In parasitic fashion, the rival’s communication then “hosts” the poisonous counter-message, which is recalled upon each new exposure to the rival communication. This strategy harnesses associative memory to turn the rival’s communication into a retrieval cue for a poisonous counter-message embedded within the rival’s communication. In seven randomized tests (N = 3,678), we show that the PPC procedure lastingly undermines a rival’s communication by influencing opinions of the rival communicator, as well as behavior in the form of real political donations to actual candidates. 1Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. 2University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 3Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA. *Corresponding author. Email: jlaskyfink@berkeley.edu

The influence of social norms on behavior has been a longstanding storyline within social psychology. Our 2007 Psychological Science publication presented a new rendition of this classic telling. The reported field experiment showed that social norms could be leveraged to promote residential energy conservation, but importantly, the descriptive norm was shown to increase consumption for low-consuming households. This potential destructive effect of social norms was eliminated with the addition of an injunctive message of social approval for using less energy. The article is among the 30 most-cited articles across all APS publications, which we attribute to our methodology, which measured real behavior in a large-scale field experiment and to several circumstances associated with the timing of the work. The article coincided with the explosion of social media, the emergence of behavioral economics, and a heightened level of concern about climate change. These contemporaneous activities set the stage for our work and for its high degree of citation.

The public health impact of evidence-based, preventive parenting interventions has been severely constrained by low rates of participation when interventions are delivered under natural conditions. It is critical that prevention scientists develop effective and feasible parent engagement methods. This study tested video-based methods for engaging parents into an evidence-based program for divorcing parents. Three alternative versions of a video were created to test the incremental effectiveness of different theory-based engagement strategies based on social influence and health behavior models. A randomized controlled trial was conducted to compare the three experimental videos versus two control conditions, an information-only brochure and an information-only video. Participants were attendees at brief, court-mandated parent information programs (PIPs) for divorcing or never married, litigating parents. Of the 1123 eligible parents, 61% were female and 13% were never married to the child's other parent. Randomization to one of five conditions was conducted at the PIP class level, blocking on facilitator. All participants completed a 15-item, empirically validated risk index and an invitation form. Results of regression analyses indicated that the most streamlined version, the core principles video, significantly increased parents' interest in participating in the parenting intervention, enrollment during a follow-up call, and initiation (i.e., attending at least one session) compared to one or the other control conditions. Findings suggest that videos based on social influence and health behavior theories could provide an effective and feasible method for increasing parent engagement, which would help maximize the public health benefits of evidence-based parenting interventions.

In principle, science should set itself apart from the hue and cry of partisan bickering. After all, the scientific enterprise reaches its conclusions by testing theories about the workings of the natural world. Consider the porpoise. Based on its appearance and aquatic home, the animal was assumed to be a fish. But evidence gleaned from observing its bone structure, its lack of gills and the genes it holds in common with other warm-blooded land animals leads to its being classified as a mammal with a very high level of confidence.