This isn’t one of those light hearted blogs that links to all and sundry, but if you’ll allow me a moment, I thought that an article in Social Influence might tickle those of you who are thinking about normative education and the impact it has on behaviour.
The study looks at the:
ability of printed normative messages to influence conservation behavior among hotel guests. While prior research has shown that social norms can both guide and spur behavior, there are a number of questions about the generality of the effects, the impact of aligning descriptive and injunctive norms, and the relative impact of normative information about a specific versus general referent group.
In other words can written messages make us not ask for new bath towels when we stay at a hotel.
See also:
(via The Research Digest Blog)
Filed under: educational theory , normative education
more ‘off-topic posts’, please! This one is very relevant to the difficulties of changing behaviour by telling, suggesting, imploring, cajoling, etc. The downsides of these kinds of messages might be that people come to pay less attention to the ‘messenger’ – I am certainly cynical about the ’save the environment’ messages in hotels -it is more about their bottom line (less towel washing saves them money) than about the environment.
[...] May, 2008 in research Slightly off our beaten track, but having been encouraged the last time I wandered out this way I’ve been tempted to to do so again. In any case I hope [...]