The Oil Drum

This post is Robert Cialdini's testimony to the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education, House Committee on Science and Technology, on the topic of "The Contribution of the Social Sciences to the Energy Challenge," September 25, 2007. A link to the committee's session (which involved other prominent social scientists such as Dr. Robert Bordley, John "Skip" A. Laitner, Dr. Jerry Ellig, and Dr. Duane Wegener) can be found here.

I bring this to you for many reasons, but most of all to generate a discussion of extant social norms in the social scientific realm with regard to energy and environment as well as to generate a discussion about the state of our study of those norms. Plus, I just think loads of Bob Cialdini, who is Regents’ Professor of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University; Cialdini has written many important tomes on applied psychology, and I suggest you read as many of them as you can.

Abstract
Social norms, which refer to what most people do (descriptive social norms) and what most people approve (injunctive social norms), are remarkably powerful in directing human action. Social science research has uncovered the most successful ways to incorporate norms into messages designed to produce socially desirable conduct.

Studies in several environmental contexts (e.g., home energy conservation, household recycling, hotel conservation efforts) show that (1) energy users severely underestimate the role of social norms in guiding their energy usage, (2) communications that employ social norm-based appeals for pro-environmental behavior are superior to those that employ traditional persuasive appeals, and (3) even though these highly effective social norm-based appeals are nearly costless—requiring no large technological fixes, tax incentives, or regulatory changes—they are rarely (and sometimes mistakenly) delivered.