How to change a social norm

Duel at dawn in 19th century Georgia. Two seconds have tried in vain to mediate, but neither of the parties is willing to concede.

The pistols are loaded, the distance measured.

– Most social norms facilitate interaction between people. But certain unwritten rules, often based on honour, can instead engender terrible deeds. In order to handle such situations you need to have levers to pull, to enable change, Lina Eriksson explains.

There is no procedure, court or document that determine which norms will prevail in a society. And yet, most people abide by those unspoken rules that you learn in childhood, says Lina Eriksson, Professor of Political Science who is conducting research on social norms.

– The term “social norm” has two meanings that partly overlap. To some extent it involves what people in general perceive as normal behaviour, such as bringing an umbrella when it is raining.

But “social norms” can also involve morality. Then it is not about what people in general do, but about what they should do, regardless of whether it falls under normal behaviour or not. Some examples include paying taxes and not littering.

– We keep each other in check using different sanctions. For example, gossip is about subjecting a person who misbehaves to disdain, something that may have severe consequences, such as being ostracised from one's friends.

One way of displaying your attitude to social norms is through the way you dress. For example, you go to your office job properly attired – unless you are the top executive of an international technology company and can afford to show that you do not care, says Lina Eriksson.

– Some norms around clothes are more significant than others. If I turn up at work in a red cocktail dress, my colleagues may raise an eyebrow. But if I do so at a funeral, the mourners will probably take offence, maybe even feel that I am mocking them, since black, or at least discreet clothing, is a powerful norm on such occasion.

Norms help us in our day-to-day lives and make interaction with our fellow man go more smoothly.

But norms can also be destructive, Lina Eriksson explains.

– Even if people realise that a certain behaviour is harmful, it can be incredibly difficult to change. Someone has to take the first step and that person also, to a great extent, risks being sanctioned in various ways. But once change has begun it can happen very rapidly. For example in Sweden, the view of marriage, sexual orientation and child rearing has changed radically in a couple of generations.

What Lina Eriksson investigates is how these changes happen and how you can support a trend towards better social norms. It is about having a number of “levers” to pull, she explains.

– One such “lever” is to examine if what people perceive as a norm truly is one. For example, among college students in the US there is a perception that most of their peers are partying and getting drunk at the weekend. However, when one college conducted a survey it turned out not to be true at all; the majority of students did their coursework or something completely different when they had time off. This insight resulted in less pressure to attend parties – but could sometimes also lead to those who were drinking starting to party even more.

Encouraging those who do something good often works, but pointing fingers at those who do something bad often has a negative impact, Lina Eriksson explains.

– One example is electricity providers that by using a smiley managed to encourage customers who consume less electricity than their neighbours. However, showing a frowning emoji to those who use more electricity than others only leads to irritation. This is because a frowning emoji breaches another norm: that you have the right to determine your own actions.

Another lever may be to reduce the incentive for bad behaviour.

– In an American school where it was considered tough to carry a weapon, they introduced a reporting system where those who reported armed pupils received a reward. This led to there not being very many people, other than their closest friends, to whom the tough guys could show their weapons, and the reason for carrying them disappeared.

A very unpleasant social norm is female genital mutilation, which is practised in Sudan, for example.

– One way of changing perceptions of a phenomenon is to introduce new words. In Sudan, there is a movement that uses the term “saleema” for uncircumcised women, which translates as “whole, as God created her”. This way, they hope to create a positive attitude to refraining from the intervention.

There is a sort of code of honour in criminal gangs, where injustices lead to bloody reprisals, says Lina Eriksson.

– It often leads to a cycle of violence that is difficult to break out of, and where even people who have nothing to do with the conflict risk becoming involved. One way of diminishing the power of gangs is to make it easier for young people to be part of several groups. Anyone with a job or in education and who perhaps also plays football or does something else in their spare time, is better equipped to resist peer pressure than someone whose only social affiliation is the gang.

The duels of old between aristocrats were also about never tolerating an insult. The people of the time were fully aware that this tradition was neither a good one nor solved any problems, and duels were banned in many places. But still they continued, says Lina Eriksson.

– A couple of examples of how they managed to stop duelling in the 19th century come from the American south. They decided that anyone who participated in a duel would be excluded from political positions, and also that the widow of an officer killed in a duel would not receive a pension. The regulations meant that the norm of duelling was in conflict with the norm of being involved in politics, something that was expected from an aristocrat, and it was also in conflict with the norm of being a responsible husband and father. Both regulations made it possible to decline a duel without being perceived as a coward and thus losing face.