Promotion of behavioural change for health in a heterogeneous population

Schimmelpfennig, Robin; Vogt, Sonja; Ehret, Sönke; Efferson, Charles

doi:10.2471/blt.20.285227

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Because of this trade-off, a resistant target is no longer guaranteed to maximize the sum of the direct and indirect effects. In particular, an amenable target tends to produce more overall behaviour change than a resistant target in situations where neither generates much behaviour change [43], and our results here are consistent with this idea. In figures 6-8, for example, the initial x i distributions are only moderately skewed and total behavioural change ranges from moderate to complete in the sense that the final proportion choosing Alt ranges from a bit more than 0.4 (figure 8a, Amenable target) to 1.0 (figure 6a, resistant target).…”

Section: Heterogeneous Response To Interventionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Put differently, she needs to know what proportion of people must change for conformity and coordination to switch from reinforcing the status quo norm to reinforcing the social planner's preferred alternative. The trouble is that people are usually not all the same [39], and ordinary forms of heterogeneity introduce a number of challenges and complexities [1,9,14,[40][41][42][43]. As a bare minimum, the social planner must ask both how big her intervention should be and which segment of the population to target with the intervention.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When norm change hurts

Efferson,

Ehret,

von Flüe

et al. 2024

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Applied cultural evolution includes any effort to mobilize social learning and cultural evolution to promote behaviour change. Social tipping is one version of this idea based on conformity and coordination. Conformity and coordination can reinforce a harmful social norm, but they can also accelerate change from a harmful norm to a beneficial alternative. Perhaps unfortunately, the link between the size of an intervention and social tipping is complex in heterogeneous populations. A small intervention targeted at one segment of society can induce tipping better than a large intervention targeted at a different segment. We develop and examine two models showing that the link between social tipping and social welfare is also complex in heterogeneous populations. An intervention strategy that creates persistent miscoordination, exactly the opposite of tipping, can lead to higher social welfare than another strategy that leads to tipping. We show that the potential benefits of miscoordination often hinge specifically on the preferences of people most resistant to behaviour change. Altogether, ordinary forms of heterogeneity complicate applied cultural evolution considerably. Heterogeneity weakens both the link between the size of a social planner’s intervention and behaviour change and the link between behaviour change and the well-being of society. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Social norm change: drivers and consequences’.

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Section: Heterogeneous Response To Interventionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When norm change hurts

Efferson,

Ehret,

von Flüe

et al. 2024

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Although it might be relatively easy to convince people already concerned about climate change to act sustainably, their behavior change may also be the least likely to initiate spillovers or have cascading effects on more resistant populations. The details will determine the best strategy for maximizing behavior change because of a fundamental trade-off: On the one hand, exposing people amenable to change to an intervention will maximize the direct effects of the intervention but minimize subsequent indirect effects based on social interactions within the population; on the other hand, exposing people resistant to change to an intervention will minimize the direct effects but maximize the indirect effects because less social information is needed to subsequently convince those more amenable to change (Berger et al, 2021; Schimmelpfennig et al, 2021).…”

Section: The Devil In the Details Of Social-norm Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling Up Change: A Critical Review and Practical Guide to Harnessing Social Norms for Climate Action

Constantino

Sparkman

Kraft‐Todd

et al. 2022

Psychol Sci Public Interest

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100

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Anthropogenic carbon emissions have the potential to trigger changes in climate and ecosystems that would be catastrophic for the well-being of humans and other species. Widespread shifts in production and consumption patterns are urgently needed to address climate change. Although transnational agreements and national policy are necessary for a transition to a fully decarbonized global economy, fluctuating political priorities and lobbying by vested interests have slowed these efforts. Against this backdrop, bottom-up pressure from social movements and shifting social norms may offer a complementary path to a more sustainable economy. Furthermore, norm change may be an important component of decarbonization policies by accelerating or strengthening the impacts of other demand-side measures. Individual actions and policy support are social processes—they are intimately linked to expectations about the actions and beliefs of others. Although prevailing social norms often reinforce the status quo and unsustainable development pathways, social dynamics can also create widespread and rapid shifts in cultural values and practices, including increasing pressure on politicians to enact ambitious policy. We synthesize literature on social-norm influence, measurement, and change from the perspectives of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and economics. We discuss the opportunities and challenges for the use of social-norm and social-tipping interventions to promote climate action. Social-norm interventions aimed at addressing climate change or other social dilemmas are promising but no panacea. They require in-depth contextual knowledge, ethical consideration, and situation-specific tailoring and testing to understand whether they can be effectively implemented at scale. Our review aims to provide practitioners with insights and tools to reflect on the promises and pitfalls of such interventions in diverse contexts.

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“…Cultural groups, defined as clustered cultural traits, may be created by many different processes. For example, conformist learning and learning from common sources [ 131 – 133 ], norm enforcement [ 134 , 135 ], symbolic markers of in-group membership [ 136 ], collective memories [ 137 , 138 ], and the forces of cultural-group selection. These forces of cultural-group selection [ 20 , 139 , 140 ] include: Assortative migration: biases in where people with particular traits move—e.g.…”

Section: Cultural Evolvability Applied To the Paradox Of Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Paradox of diversity in the collective brain

Schimmelpfennig

Razek

Schnell

et al. 2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Human societies are collective brains. People within every society have cultural brains—brains that have evolved to selectively seek out adaptive knowledge and socially transmit solutions. Innovations emerge at a population level through the transmission of serendipitous mistakes, incremental improvements and novel recombinations. The rate of innovation through these mechanisms is a function of (1) a society's size and interconnectedness (sociality), which affects the number of models available for learning; (2) fidelity of information transmission, which affects how much information is lost during social learning; and (3) cultural trait diversity, which affects the range of possible solutions available for recombination. In general, and perhaps surprisingly, all three levers can increase and harm innovation by creating challenges around coordination, conformity and communication. Here, we focus on the ‘paradox of diversity’—that cultural trait diversity offers the largest potential for empowering innovation, but also poses difficult challenges at both an organizational and societal level. We introduce ‘cultural evolvability’ as a framework for tackling these challenges, with implications for entrepreneurship, polarization and a nuanced understanding of the effects of diversity. This framework can guide researchers and practitioners in how to reap the benefits of diversity by reducing costs. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

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Promotion of behavioural change for health in a heterogeneous population

Cited by 12 publications

References 32 publications

When norm change hurts

When norm change hurts

Scaling Up Change: A Critical Review and Practical Guide to Harnessing Social Norms for Climate Action

Paradox of diversity in the collective brain

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