While we may like to imagine that we’re entirely in control of how we think and act, the groups that are most important to us hold influence over almost every aspect of our lives – including whether we smoke, exercise, or recycle. In this episode, we discuss the power of group norms (what others do, and what they approve of), and why their influence is often underestimated relative to other individual, social, or economic factors. We leave you with tips for exerting positive social influence, so that you can harness the power of groups!

📊 Key research studies we discussed:

• Descriptive anti-littering norms can reduce littering behaviour by 26%: The transsituational influence of social norms (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1993)
• People typically underestimate the importance of normative social influence in explaining their energy conservation behaviour: Normative social influence is underdetected (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2008)
• Group norms only impact behaviour for those who strongly identify with the group: Group norms and the attitude-behaviour relationship: A role for group identification (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1996)
• Attitudes have the strongest association with intentions to behave healthily, followed by descriptive norms: Descriptive norms as an additional predictor in the theory of planned behaviour: A meta-analysis (Current Psychology, 2003)
• Descriptive norms that undermine injunctive norms have little impact: Congruent or conflicted? The impact of injunctive and descriptive norms on environmental intentions (Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2012)
• Research demonstrating the importance of leaders “practising what they preach”: Leader's group-norm violations elicit intentions to leave the group – If the group-norm is not affirmed (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2019)

📚 Books and other resources:

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, 1984)

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We thank the South West Doctoral Training Partnership for supporting this podcast and Rhannan Lacey for audiography, videography, and production.