Don't Let Social Norms Keep You Down

This group of activists joined the Climate Action March around the world on Sep. 8, 2018, asking for immediate action to reduce climate change. Photo Fabrice Florin, from flickr.

You would think that the concept of social norms wouldn’t have changed much from 100 years ago. Once the majority of people behaves one way or accepts something, everyone follows that. But it’s not that simple. Social norms in the modern age are changing, like how AI helps researchers model social norms. AI would help model how social interactions affect the overall society. And social norms may not seem like a hot topic in the news, but it is. The CEOs of PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola co., are both interested in making recycling the standard across the industry. The CEO of The Coca-Cola co said ““What I want is that every bottle be made out of recycled plastic. It’d just become the norm”. You can watch him in this video! 

So this blog will be about modern social norms, and how we got big soda companies interested in social norms, like recycling.

In a world of increased social activism, how do we catch the stragglers who still aren’t interested? Those who don’t have environmental and social norms on their mind. One suggestion is to ask people what they want their future legacy to be. It makes sense, no one wants to be remembered as a scrooge.(like the CEOs of Pepsi and Coca Cola). But it used to be easier to get people to practice positive, environmental social norms.  Order Without Social Norms: How Personal Norm Activation Can Protect the Environment says that, in an crowded society, people face situations that will harm the common good, but they feel like their choice won’t make a big difference(1102). This is one downside of growing urbanization and with more people moving to big cities. How do we get people to feel like they are part of a group where their choices matter?

Well, we have to be hold people accountable for their choices. Then they will feel like their choices make a difference. One environmental success story of the modern age, is that of household recycling. Dynamic relationships between social norms and pro-environmental behavior discovered that recycling boosts the probability that the household is personally upset about recycling, and this is increased if the household recycled two years previously. It works because once people start recycling, it’s more upsetting for them to stop. This reinforcement implies that societal actions encouraging change in either personal norms or recycling will support growth in the other. People also don’t want to leave a negative legacy of themselves, or feel like they aren’t recycling when everyone else is.

Once people start recycling it is hard for them to stop. Image from pxhere in CC0 public domain.

Once the majority of people start recycling, it pushes a social norm to the front of people’s minds Then those who lag behind will slowly start to conform to it. Conformity is usually talked about as a negative thing, but it can be good for environmental causes!  You only need to get most people on board with your solutions. Saul McLeod, on Simple Psychology says that, “Social Norms are unwritten rules about how to behave. For example we expect students to arrive to lesson on time and complete their work.”  People often conform to these unspoken rules. People need norms to guide and direct their behavior. Conforming is also a good way to get businesses on the positive side of social norms. 

Even with recycling social norms tackled, there are still many grand challenges left to be solved for the next generation, like millennials and generation Z. For example, one National Geographic article points out, Ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers, at least so far. To do something about it, we don’t have to remake our planet’s entire energy system. So in theory, this should be an easier social norm to change. We should focus on cleaning up the coasts rather than in the center of the oceans where plastic accumulates in so called ‘garbage patches’. This backs up the fact that coastal areas should be the most focused on changing their social norms, because it’s cheaper to reduce garbage in the ocean than it is to clean up what is left of it when it makes it to the middle of the ocean.

I am simplifying things a ton. There is a whole system which has influence on social norms. Thinking in Systems is a good reminder that almost everything is a system, most of which are very difficult to understand or change quickly. But remember to, “Listen to the wisdom of the system.”(194) But where do social norms fit into the system? Social norms are a relatively new idea. Law and Society Review, Volume 34, published in year 2000 says that, “The subject of social norms is once again hot.”(158) The Law and Society Review also says that people don’t know where to fit social norms into, which I think has changed since the year 2000.

“You’ll stop looking for who’s to blame; instead you’ll start asking, “What’s the system?” This opens up the idea that a system can cause its own behavior.” Rarely is the individual to blame.

Instead of blaming the individual, it’s better to work on changing the system. Photo from SlutWalk NYC in 2011. Photo from flickr.

Bibliography

Etzioni, A. (2000). Social norms: Internalization, persuasion, and history. Law Society Review 34(1), 157-178.

Huber, Viscusi, W., & Bell, J. (2018). Dynamic relationships between social norms and pro-environmental behavior: Evidence from household recycling. Behavioural Public Policy, 1-25. doi:10.1017/bpp.2017.13

Meadows, D. H. (2015). Thinking in Systems: A Primer (D. Wright, Ed.). White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Rochman, Chelsea (2016) Environ. Res. Lett. 11 041001

Staub, C. (2019, February 01). Coca-Cola: Recycled plastic can ‘become the norm’. Retrieved from https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2019/01/30/coca-cola-recycled-plastic-can-become-the-norm/

Wiggers, K. (2019, February 12). AI helps researchers model the impact of social norms. https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/11/ai-helps-researchers-model-the-impact-of-social-norms/

Vandenbergh, M. P. (2005). Order without social norms: How personal norm activation can protect the environment. Northwestern University Law Review. 1101-1166.

No littering sign at a highway in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Picture by wikipedia user: Z22

Littering is the classic environmental problem that plagues cities, getting onto roads, falling into storm drains, and being eaten by domestic and wild animals alike. Littering is something that most people are familiar with, because no one wants to be a litterbug. Littering is defined as waste products that have been disposed of improperly, without consent, at an inappropriate location. It may have been something the cool kids did years ago, but it has huge environmental and economic impacts. Thankfully, we have made huge strides in reduction to litter today. For example, Keep America Beautiful’s Great American Cleanup, which marked it’s 21st year in 2019, engages more than 3.4 million volunteers.  Being apart of a big organization that is making big changes in the environment and in societal norms, can be rewarding for the individual and their community. We can thank social norms for some of the reductions in littering today.

Even computers can be litter. Photo from: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/697691

Littering is the grandfather of social norms and environmental issues coming together. In my last post, I linked to a video of kids in Hawaii wanting to phase out single use plastics, because they end up littering their beach. So littering is still an issue today, but it has drastically improved. There is still a lot to study and a lot of unanswered variables about littering. A study in 2011 discovered that “For smokers, the observed littering rate for cigarette butts was 65%. Results from the general littering observations showed that of all the disposal behaviors observed, 17% resulted in litter.”(Littering in Context: Personal and Environmental Predictors of Littering Behavior) Thankfully today, smoking cigarettes is not as common. And there are still more disposal sites for cigarette butts than there was decades ago.

Photo from wikipedia. Members of the Coast Guard 313 Port Security Unit pick up litter along the road outside Joint Task Force Guantanamo

So what do we do about littering? It’s the social norm today to avoid littering and to sort your waste into the appropriate bin (landfill, compost, recycling). But how do we ensure these messages continue to be passed on to future generations? Anti-littering messages and free litter bags aren’t effective enough. (The Experimental Control of Littering) Well, one study focused on how to reduce children littering, and it’s surprisingly simple. “Paying the children 10 cents or giving them a free ticket to a special movie for turning in their litter resulted in over 90% of their litter being returned”(Reducing Children’s Littering on a Nature Trail). If you make it fun or into a game, young kids will get in on picking up litter. For example, Keep Columbus Beautiful aims to eliminate roadside trash by educating the city’s youngest residents and empowering them to create change. So positive social reinforcement gets kids to adhere to more effect social norms when it comes to littering. By teaching young children the impacts of littering, they will see it is as important for the rest of their lives. And they can teach it to their parents, if it’s something that wasn’t taught to them!

Bibliography:

Hart, D. E., & Bailey, J. S. (n.d.). “Reducing Children’s Littering on a Nature Trail.” Taylor and Francis Online, 15 July 2010, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00958964.1975.9941516. Retrieved February 13, 2019,10.1080/00958964.1975.9941516

Schultz, P. W., & al, E. (n.d.). “Littering in Context: Personal and Environmental Predictors of Littering Behavior.” Sage Journals, 28 July 2011, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0013916511412179. Retrieved February 13, 2019,https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916511412179

Clark, R. N., & al, E. (n.d.). “The Experimental Control of Littering.” Taylor and Francis Online, The Journal of Environmental Education, 2 May 2014, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00958964.1972.10801715. Retrieved February 13, 2019,10.1080/00958964.1972.10801715

Enforcement by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Want to protect the environment and make the world a more beautiful place? But you’re overwhelmed at where to begin? There’s no need to do it alone!  One of the best ways to enact social change, which can lead to institutional change, is through community enforcement. Community Enforcement, as described in Social Norms and Community Enforcement by Michihiro Kandori, is “[people] change their partners over time and dishonest behaviour against one partner causes sanctions by other members in society”. It basically means working as a community to make positive change by pushing out the negative behaviors.  The changes seem invisible in the short term, but they are not. When I was first interested in protecting the environment, I volunteered at a local salmon hatchery when I was in middle school, which is one example of community enforcement. I got the opportunity to learn more about salmon runs and how to protect them from accidental harm. It was very rewarding. Beach cleanups, gardening, invasive plant removal, and decreases in littering are all other examples of community enforcement.

The great thing about community enforcement is that even kids and teens can have a say in changing social norms. This is a video of kids in Hawaii wanting to make it unacceptable to throw single use plastics away. According to Andrady and Neal in Applications and Societal Benefits of Plastics, plastic has been used since 1600 B.C.E. and is still useful today because of the health benefits that plastic can provide, to keep food and water safe for long periods of time. This may have been acceptable in 2009, but in 2050 will we still be saying that single use plastic are the best choice for keeping food and water safe? Or will community enforcement have pushed out the acceptability of throwing the trash away, where we can’t see it, where it disappears into the world without edges. The world without edges means that the world we live in doesn’t have boundaries, and our choices can affect the larger world around us. For example, if there’s an oil spill off the coast of Washington state, it could affect animals hundreds of miles away, even in different countries.

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

Through communities making the negative impacts on the environment by humans known, it does change others’ behaviour. This works because people are heavily impacted by the society around them, and the choices that others make. This article in The Guardian, Social norm strategies do work – but there are risks involved, points out negative attempts at changing social norms, such as through advertising. Although it doesn’t say it directly, one of the best ways to make big social changes is through making those who do the negative behaviour seem like the minority, like they are an outcast. Unfortunately, for social changes to be effective, the social norms have to be established first.

Bibliography:

Kandori, M. (1992). Social Norms and Community Enforcement. The Review of Economic Studies,59(1), 63-80. Retrieved from            http://www.jstor.org/stable/2297925

Andrady, A., & Neal, M. (2009). Applications and Societal Benefits of Plastics. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 364(1526), 1977-1984. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40485976

Corner, Adam (2011, December, 16). “Social Norm Strategies Do Work – but There Are Risks Involved.” The Guardian www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/social-norm-behaviour-change.

A family of javelinas encounters the U.S.-Mexico border wall near the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona (copyright photo by Matt Clark, Defenders of Wildlife; non-commercial use allowed with credit and copyright).

Since the first barriers were built in 1994, the Mexico-United States has been a controversial political topic. Growing up near Seattle, I had my own opinions about the border wall. But I never saw it. I never had to deal with unwanted stops by the U.S. border patrol. I wasn’t separated from my family by a wall. As far as I was concerned, in my Pacific Northwest life, the wall was completely out of mind It was part of my invisible present. The invisible present is when something is invisible to individual observations, and is usually a slow change that can go unnoticed. It was when I visited the Sonoran Desert in Arizona when I was seventeen as part of a summer camp, that I had to actually think about all the consequences of the wall. I volunteered at a place called Borderlands Restoration, where we helped pot plants that would later be placed near the border wall the help with habitat restoration.

For one of our summer camp activities we had guest speakers from Sierra Club to talk about the border wall . I learned that the wall, even parts that people could get around easily, were a huge barrier for some animals. It blocked migration patterns, caused flooding, and damages wild lands (https://www.sierraclub.org/borderlands). I still have the posters up in my room from the Sierra Club, in both English and Spanish, reminding myself of the the animals wishing to be free of the wall. I was fascinated by all this new information, and embarrassed I hadn’t taken into consideration the environmental aspects of our political borders. How could I, an animal lover and environmentalist, not think about all this?

Desert hares are impacted by the border wall. They might be able to get under some road blockades, but any section of the wall more than a couple feet high is too tall for them to get around. https://pxhere.com/en/photo/744237

I had fallen into an unfortunate social norm. Until I had been made aware of the issue I had the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality without meaning to. I’m not alone in this. People tend not to act on environmental issues, even important ones, unless they see other people working on making changes. Proof of this mindset has been found in a study on hotels trying to be more environmentally friendly. “Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels”, found that hotel guests were more likely to participate in a towel reusing program if they believed that others were reusing their towels, more so than if they just saw a note asking them to reuse their towels. Admittedly, if I had seen my peers from the PNW acting on environmental justice at the border wall I would be a lot more interested as well.

To protect future harm to the wildlife near the wall, we must make it a social norm to hold politicians accountable for environmental impacts. There is a disconnect between what is known by environmental scientists and the social norms of the United States in 2019. But as always there is still time, as mentioned in Measuring Social Norms, “if social norms are learned, they may be modified over time”(284). We have to start by enlightening those who do not see the effects first hand, because they do not know the consequences of having built a wall, and possibly, a bigger wall in the future. “In such conflict situations… if the student perceived an overlap between his preference and the preference of the authorities, he was quite likely to select the authorities in which both approved.”(290) The government has made it acceptable to build a wall, and to shutdown the government to build a bigger wall, and there is not enough questioning the environmental consequences.

Bibliography

“How Would a Border Wall Affect the Environment?” TIME, 27 Feb. 2017, youtu.be/S3M_XEsr6kA.

Goldstein, Noah J, et al. “Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels.” JSTOR, Journal of Consumer Research, Volume35 Issue3 3 Mar. 2008, academic.oup.com/jcr/article/35/3/472/1856257.

Labovitz, Sanford, and Robert Hagedorn. “Measuring Social Norms.” The Pacific Sociological Review, vol. 16no. 3July 1973, pp. 283–303., doi:10.2307/1388488.