Social Norms Approach

The social norms approach, or social norms marketing, is an environmental strategy gaining ground in health campaigns. While conducting research in the mid-1980s, two researchers, H.W. Perkins and A.D. Berkowitz, reported that students at a small U.S. college held exaggerated beliefs about the normal frequency and consumption habits of other students with regard to alcohol. These inflated perceptions have been found in many educational institutions, with varying populations and locations. Despite the fact that college drinking is at elevated levels, the perceived amount almost always exceeds actual behavior The social norms approach has shown signs of countering misperceptions, however research on resulting changes in behavior resulting from changed perceptions varies between mixed to conclusively nonexistent.

Read more about Social Norms Approach:  Constructs of The Social Norms Approach, History, Lifecycle, Glossary, See Also

Famous quotes containing the words social, norms and/or approach:

    The primary imperative for women who intend to assume a meaningful and decisive role in today’s social change is to begin to perceive themselves as having an identity and personal integrity that has as strong a claim for being preserved intact as that of any other individual or group.
    Margaret Adams (b. 1916)

    There must be a profound recognition that parents are the first teachers and that education begins before formal schooling and is deeply rooted in the values, traditions, and norms of family and culture.
    Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)

    A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)