Explicit or implicit? Norm communication and people's experiences of normative influence attempts

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to provide a first experimental test of explicitly versus implicitly communicated descriptive norms. It was hypothesized that both explicitly and implicitly communicated norms would be more influential (i.e., yield higher acceptance toward an environmental policy) than a no-message control, and that the implicit norm would be more influential than the explicit. Moreover, it was investigated how the two norm messages differed in terms of people’s experiences of the influence attempts. An online between-groups experiment (N = 484) was conducted, participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. None of the directional hypotheses were confirmed, and it was discussed whether the results might be due to a social norm that is already changing.