Research seminar with Lina Eriksson, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg. Social norms affect us in almost all aspects of our lives, whether we comply with them, choose to violate them, or try to change them. Given their power over us, whether a particular norm has positive or negative consequences – and for whom – is an urgent question for policy makers, and sometimes we as a democratic society are faced with social norms we would like to change. But although social norms do change, it is notoriously difficult to make them change. We do know a bit about how to change social norms, but what knowledge we have is fragmented. In my latest book project, I outline different aspects of how social norms work, and use these to identify ways of changing social norms: what I call levers to pull. Each lever is associated with some aspect of social norms. No lever will work in all cases, and what works in a given case is very context dependent. Nevertheless, armed with a toolbox for social norm change, policy makers are much better equipped to change social norms than before. In this paper I outline how social norms work and the levers we have available to us as a result.
Images in thumbnail:
Smile: Photo by HLS 44 on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@UC8faplcDYC-6GqXJ043n9pw
Elbow bump: Photo by Noah on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@noahmatteo
