Influencing people: Understanding norms and human action

Marketing Lesson

Last day of the week already!

Man, time flies doesn’t it.

Shipping a bit later today cuz I had to go back with the fam to my mother-in-law.

She sells egg rolls from a cart on the weekend. And since my FIL passed, I help her with that.

Not to go on another one of RJY’s classic, patented, and trademarked trips to Tangent City, but you learn so much about entrepreneurship in that context.

How price and location impact sales. Even stuff like the weather. What sells or doesn’t in which cultures. How and why signage works.

Speaking of, this is what senior marketing lecturer and my friend Mr. Alan Charlesworth is big on. Watch our chat here:

And of course, social proof!

That’s incidentally the topic of today’s piece so let’s get into today’s marketing lesson.

Btw, do me a solid. Reply when you’re done to let me know if you enjoyed this piece. I alternate between case studies, marketing examples, and marketing lessons. Your feedback helps me decide what I should create more of. Thank you!

“What even are norms and why do I care?”

Human behavior (you’re selling to humans presumably, although your market share increases substantially if you include the Andromeda system) can be influenced.

One way to do that is with rules.

Rules tell people: “If you don’t do X/if you do Y, you’ll face consequence Z.”

Example: the speed limit is a rule.

You can’t negotiate the speed limit.

Example: Cheating in a marriage is a rule.

You’re probably not gonna convince your spouse that you interpreted the whole cheating thing as more of a subtle suggestion: “You could do it. I’d prefer it if you didn’t. Doesn’t really matter. It’s not a huuuge deal now that I think about it.”

So rules are clear and have consequences.

But there are more ways to influence human behavior.

Norms are another vehicle to accomplish that.

A norm says: this is something we socially approve or disapprove of.

Example: Farting in an elevator is a norm. There’s no law that says you can’t shoot a toot and have a hoot in an elevator. But I doubt it’ll be a fantastic way to make friends.

If, right now, you’re thinking that norms are different in different cultures, excellent! That’s partly the domain of cross-cultural psychology.

For example: In some cultures, if the party starts at 20:00, you’re late if you arrive at eight. (That rhymes, perhaps I should consider a career as an MC?)

You’re on time if you arrive at 19:30.

But in other cultures, if the party starts at 20:00, you’re expected at 21:00 or 22:00.

When I say cultures, your mind might go to different countries. And while that’s valid, different groups can have different cultures too.

E.g. what’s socially approved of in one young adult group might be disapproved of in another.

Types of norms

There are many different types of norms:

• Descriptive vs. prescriptive

• Formal vs. informal

• Folkways, mores, taboos

• Proscriptive vs. prescriptive

• Positive vs. negative

• Gender

• Ethical

• Personal

• Cultural

• Professional

• Social

• Technological

If y’all are interested, we can talk about that in greater detail at some point.

Btw, if you’re deeply interested in entrepreneurial science, have a very curious mind, and want to learn as much as you possibly can, then consider the YRC DEEP program. This is the equivalent of a gym membership for solopreneurs. In this program, I have the time to tackle more complex topics and in greater detail. So if you wanna support me and if that’s something you enjoy, consider joining.

I wanna talk about 3 types of norms today.

1. Injunctive Norms

This refers to social approval or disapproval of certain behaviors.

They reflect what is considered acceptable or unacceptable within a particular group and encourage individuals to act in a way that aligns with community standards.

Example: This sign highlights the expectation of being a "good neighbor" and the social disapproval of littering.

Social science can be a bit tricky because different people might classify things differently. You could also classify this as a mix of:

• Prescriptive norm: Instructing people not to litter

• Moral norm: good neighbor implies not littering makes you morally virtuous and it underlines the social expectation.

2. Descriptive Norms

Descriptive norms describe (that’s how I remember it) what is commonly observed or believed to be true within a specific social group or context.

They focus on how people typically behave in a given situation.

The statement “Last month, 63% of shoppers did NOT buy plastic bags.” isn’t really instructing individuals to DO anything…

It’s kinda leaving it to the imagination by implying that only child molesters, church arsonists, and people who pour milk in the bowl before they add the cereal, buy plastic bags.

A few things I wanna draw your attention to:

• The use of that font, the blue text on a white background, and the font size help with saliency; it stands out!

• The sentence is easy to digest mentally which helps with cognitive fluency.

• The larger size of 63% helps underline just how many people engage in the desired behavior and the fact that it’s such an awkward number adds to the believability.

• Lastly, the last two sentences are prescriptive norms: “Cut down on plastic use. Reuse your bags.” In our little marketing world, we call those call to actions or CTAs and they’re great because, again, from a cognitive fluency POV, you’re making it easy for people who’re bought in to know what you want them to do next.

  • P.S. I’ve literally used that as a header on sales letters: “Here’s what I want you to do next”

3. Personal Norms

Personal norms refer to an individual‘s belief about their moral obligation to engage in a specific behavior.

Personal norms have been shown to strongly predict a diversity of pro-environmental intentions and behaviors, including (reducing) car use (e.g., [38,39]), buying environmentally-friendly products [40–42], and the adoption of alternative fuelled vehicles [43]. These studies indicate that the stronger one‘s personal norm to act pro-environmentally, the more someone is inclined to make pro-environmental choices and act pro-environmentally.

As proposed in the focus theory of normative conduct [21], we assume that personal norms should also be made salient to be able to exert an effect on behavior. (de Groot, Abrahamse, & Jones, 2013)

Emphasis mine.

What this means in normal people speak is that if an individual already believes something, they’re more likely to act accordingly. So it helps to remind them of what they already believe so you can help them be congruent.

So if we rewrite that sign with: “Thank you for NOT buying a plastic bag.” we’re using a personal norm to influence the pro-environmental shoppers.

What’s more powerful?

Descriptive norms are more powerful than injunctive norms.

If everyone in your group is doing something or NOT doing something, it's quite uncomfortable to go against that.

Example:

If there’s a strong stigma against tattoos in a culture (societal injunctive norm), but a 23 yr old boy falls in love with a 20 yr old girl whose entire peer group has tattoos (within peer group descriptive norm), you bet your behind that our 23 yr old fella is getting a tattoo. He’s feeling the social pressure and influence of the descriptive norm that surrounds him.

"Actions speak louder than words,” and whenever there’s a conflict between what we should do and what people are doing, we tend to go with what people are doing.

I caught myself the other day going 100 km/hr where you could only go 70 because of road works. It had been a while since I passed the sign and everyone around me was going the normal speed limit so I started second-guessing myself. I was 90% sure the speed limit was 70 but since I hadn’t been there before, I thought I might be wrong. Eventually, the sign “end of 70 speed limit” came, so the descriptive norm was stronger than, not the injunctive norm, but even the rule.

Influencing people

In this essay from a few days ago, I discuss a paper by Cialdini et al. (1990) that shows the influence descriptive norms have over injunctive norms.

People know they shouldn’t litter but when you put them into an environment with a lot of litter, they’re more likely to litter. They copy what other people do.

And in Persuasive normative messages: The influence of injunctive and personal norms on using free plastic bags, de Groot, Abrahamse, & Jones (2013) found that a combination of a personal norm and an injunctive norm works better than either by itself.

So the sum of the parts truly is bigger than the whole.

Please note that they classified (a) as an Injunctive Normative Message, which is only true for the sentence “Please continue to re-use your bags.” The main sentence “SHOPPERS… ENVIRONMENT,” should be classified as a descriptive norm in my opinion.

Phew, another whopper of an essay.

Hope you learned something new.

Let me know if you enjoyed it.

We’ll talk on Monday,

RJY

P.S. Next Monday, there’s a YRC DEEP Group Coaching session. So if you join now, you can come to that one as well as the second one on June 19th. Solopreneurship is easier in a group. Come join us, be surrounded by peers, get answers to your questions, and finally make progress!