Ethics & Compliance

Social norms are shared expectations on how people within a certain group will or should behave. They are often considered as unwritten rules that govern behavior and tend to be very influential.Influencing behavior using social norms can take a variety of forms. For example, some studies aim to correct misunderstandings around descriptive norms (what people in a group actually do). One trial involving the UK Behavioural Insights Team increased tax compliance by emphasizing that the vast majority of people pay their taxes on time, which influenced non-compliers to become more like the majority. People generally do not like to deviate from the norm, which may explain the success of this tactic.Other approaches involve attempting to change social norms or create new social norms, which is substantially harder. One prominent example was the promotion of the ""designated driver"" (DDs) in the US during a period of high automobile fatalities. Public health officials influenced Hollywood producers to include the designated driver in film and television scenes, which caused viewers to: 1) likely believe the use of DDs was much more common than it actually was, and 2) likely consider using a DD was what they ""should"" do (i.e. the injunctive norm). Following the public health campaign, awareness and compliance with the DD protocol rose substantially, and auto fatalities dropped precipitously.

Moral suasion refers to appealing to a person's sense of morality or ethics in order to influence their behavior.In one example, the UK Behavioural Insights Team compared reminders to pay taxes. One letter featured a moralistic message ("Paying your taxes is the right thing to do") whereas another empahsized social norms ("9 out of 10 people pay their taxes on time"). The moral suasion message performed worse in this case.

Priming in behavioral interventions typically refers to attempting to influence someone's behavior by brief exposures to certain words, images, sounds, or other stimuli beforehand. In cognitive psychology, priming effects have been found to improve the speed of processing related information (for example, naming an image when previously shown a related image vs. an unrelated one). Similarly, reminding someone of how to do a behavior or its consequences can be a way to influence them a brief while later by making this information more available in memory. Notably, several well-known priming studies have failed to replicate and it may be a less potent technique than previously believed. At the very least, priming should be considered to most likely impart effects only in the short term.