The influence of social norms varies with “others” groups: Evidence from COVID-19 vaccination intentions

Abstract

The theory that health behaviors spread through social groups implies that efforts to control COVID-19 through vaccination will succeed if people believe that others in their groups are getting vaccinated. But “others” can refer to many groups, including one’s family, neighbors, fellow city or state dwellers, or copartisans. One challenge to examining these understudied distinctions is that many factors may confound observed relationships between perceived social norms (what people believe others do) and intended behaviors (what people themselves will do), as there are plausible common causes for both. We address these issues using survey data collected in the United States during late fall 2020 ( n = 824) and spring 2021 ( n = 996) and a matched design that approximates pair-randomized experiments. We find a strong relationship between perceived vaccination social norms and vaccination intentions when controlling for real risk factors (e.g., age), as well as dimensions known to predict COVID-19 preventive behaviors (e.g., trust in scientists). The strength of the relationship declines as the queried social group grows larger and more heterogeneous. The relationship for copartisans is second in magnitude to that of family and friends among Republicans but undetectable for Democrats. Sensitivity analysis shows that these relationships could be explained away only by an unmeasured variable with large effects (odds ratios between 2 and 15) on social norms perceptions and vaccination intentions. In addition, a prediction from the “false consensus” view that intentions cause perceived social norms is not supported. We discuss the implications for public health policy and understanding social norms.

Futile or fertile? The effect of persuasive strategies on citizen engagement in COVID-19 vaccine-related tweets across six national health departments

“…Interestingly, heuristic cues about social norms (i.e., bandwagon effect) demonstrated a negative impact on tweet engagement, especially for retweeting. This finding is inconsistent with that of the health behavior literature which often found perceived social norms as a positive predictor of individuals’ health behaviors ( Abdallah and Lee, 2021 ; Rabb et al, 2022 ). This may be because, in the social media persuasion context, audiences perceive emphases of social norms as advertising language, behavioral manipulation, and overly pushy, and thereby resist engaging in the tweets ( Weiger et al, 2018 ).…”

Evaluating expectations from social and behavioral science about COVID-19 and lessons for the next pandemic

“…Four claims from 2020 focused on how social identities would be highly relevant during the pandemic, particularly how they aligned with either community benefits or social norms. These expectations generally appeared to be accurate, with scores of studies concluding that connectedness with communities or aligning with morals were a predictor of behaviors and controlling the spread of illness 52,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78] . However, one challenge that is typically present for research on subjective and latent constructs such as identity, prosociality, and connectedness is that most research was conducted through surveys.…”

Erroneous Consonance. How inaccurate beliefs about physician opinion influence COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy

“…Highlighting medical expert agreement about childhood vaccine safety has been shown to increase pro-vaccine attitudes by raising the extent to which the public is aware of expert consensus (e.g., [38] . However, whereas past research on peer social groups has observed high levels of intended COVID-19 vaccine uptake despite low perceived uptake [18] , family members and close friends have been shown to exert a stronger influence on vaccine attitudes and behavior [34] .…”