Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
We’ve seen in one of the videos above that social norms can skew our perceptions of health and disease: the more unhealthy our society becomes, the worse we are at judging our personal health. Social norms are also known to more directly impact our choices in the present moment. If all the people around you are eating unhealthy food, you may be more likely to follow suit.
But what about norms that are in flux? Through a series of experiments, researchers investigated whether perceived dynamic norms—that is, the norms we expect to change—can influence our behavior enough to overcome currently dominant norms.
References
1. Christie CD, Chen FS. Vegetarian or meat? Food choice modeling of main dishes occurs outside of awareness. Appetite. 2018;121:50-54. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2017.10.036
2. Sparkman G, Walton GM. Dynamic norms promote sustainable behavior, even if it is counternormative. Psychological Science. 2017;28(11): 1663-1674. doi:10.1177/0956797617719950
We’ve seen in one of the videos above that social norms can skew our perceptions of health and disease: the more unhealthy our society becomes, the worse we are at judging our personal health. Social norms are also known to more directly impact our choices in the present moment. If all the people around you are eating unhealthy food, you may be more likely to follow suit.
But what about norms that are in flux? Through a series of experiments, researchers investigated whether perceived dynamic norms—that is, the norms we expect to change—can influence our behavior enough to overcome currently dominant norms.
References
1. Christie CD, Chen FS. Vegetarian or meat? Food choice modeling of main dishes occurs outside of awareness. Appetite. 2018;121:50-54. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2017.10.036
2. Sparkman G, Walton GM. Dynamic norms promote sustainable behavior, even if it is counternormative. Psychological Science. 2017;28(11): 1663-1674. doi:10.1177/0956797617719950
