Social norms in adolescent risk engagement and recommendation

Social influence is an important determinant of adolescent risk-taking, but little is known about how social norms contribute to adolescents’ tendency to recommend and engage in risky behaviours. Using the Adolescent Risk-taking Questionnaire, we assessed subjects’ (n = 198, age = 10–26) propensity to engage in and recommend risk-taking as well as their perception of risk norms. Adolescents recommended risk-taking more often compared to children and young adults. Perceived social norms were the most important factor predicting engagement in risky behaviours, and adolescents perceived risk-taking to be more normative than children or adults. Our findings highlight two mechanisms that contribute to adolescent risk-taking, active recommendation and perceived social norms. On this basis, we discuss potential means to attenuate excessive adolescent risk-taking.     

Understanding Change in Social-Movement Participation: The Roles of Social Norms and Group Efficacy

Across the globe, collective action has been a notable driver of social change. Previous research has identified numerous psychological antecedents of collective action participation, such as group efficacy. The mobilizing influence of social norms, however, has been comparatively neglected. Among a nationally representative Chilean sample (N = 3328), a three-wave longitudinal study tested the relationship between the perceived frequency of family and friends' participation in social movements (norms of close social networks) and change in the frequency of participants' own engagement over time. Perceived efficacy of social movements to facilitate social change was tested as a mediator of this relationship. A fully constrained bidirectional cross-lagged panel model revealed that norms of close social networks significantly predicted social-movement participation over time. This longitudinal relationship was also significantly mediated by group efficacy. Direct reverse paths were also observed, with social-movement participation predicting norms of close social networks over time. Considering low degrees of political participation often seen in societies, these results suggest that utilizing the normative context to promote participation in social movements may prove fruitful in mobilizing the drive for social change.     

Parent Education for Migrant Mothers of Left‐Behind Children in China: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Although numerous studies have indicated the significance of parental support and parent–child communication in alleviating the adverse effects of parental departure on left‐behind children, researchers have rarely addressed the impact of parent education on migrant parents. On the basis of the results of a pilot randomized controlled trial, the study reported here involved examining the possible outcomes and feasibility of a parent education program for rural‐to‐urban migrant mothers of left‐behind children in China. Informed by an existential–narrative approach to parent education, the program was composed of six 2.5‐hour sessions. The sample included 56 migrant mothers recruited from a social service center in Shenzhen, China, who were randomly assigned to either the immediate group (n = 28, M = 34.82 years, SD = 4.12, aged 23–43) or the waitlist control group (n = 28, M = 34.68 years, SD = 4.53, aged 28–43). The hypotheses of the trial were twofold: that the program would positively affect participants’ parental identity and that it would improve mother–child relationships and parenting practices. The results revealed no significant difference in parental identity between the intervention group and the waitlist control group at the post‐test assessment after ruling out the effects of pretest survey scores. However, significant differences did emerge in parent–child relationships and parenting practices. Overall, the results corroborate the feasibility of examining the current program for migrant mothers in China in a full trial. The findings also offer insights into developing empirically supported parent education programs for migrant parents.     

The return of the trauma theory: Implications for hermeneutic psychotherapy

Abstract

Myth is a narrative that can preserve or alter social and political structures by its authoritative utterance under appropriate conditions. This kind of narrative shares the same normative rules as perlocutionary or performative speech acts. A performative is a category of speech act which, by its very pronouncement, can change a person's role, status or identity, or an object's significance or meaning. Speech acts have the performative power to change behavior if they are institutionalized and taken seriously by a community.     

对环保行为的心理学解读——规范焦点理论述评

社会规范对个体行为的影响常被低估.通过将社会规范区分为描述性规范和命令性规范,并强调注意焦点的作用,规范焦点理论重新强调了社会规范的重要作用.根据规范焦点理论,不同类型的社会规范有不同的作用,恰当地使用相应的社会规范信息对环保行为进行干预,可以减少乱丢垃圾、促进垃圾分类,改善节能、节约和保护资源等行为.立足于环保应用,总结了运用这种既科学又省力的措施时应注意的问题.最后,从文化差异和我国社会现阶段特征两个方面,论述了规范焦点理论及其所倡导的措施对我国环保工作的适用性.     

眼睛效应不稳定与感知规范：一个新视角

眼睛效应指人们面对眼睛或类似眼睛的图案时会发生行为改变的现象。但是, 眼睛效应的稳健性备受争议, 主要有4种观点：促使人们更亲社会、更遵守社会规范、降低反社会行为、无效果。结合规范错觉和创新扩散理论, 基于感知规范的视角, 当感知亲社会规范流行程度较高时, 眼睛效应既会“促进亲社会行为”或“促进人们遵守社会规范”, 也会“降低反社会行为”; 但当感知亲社会规范流行程度较低时, 眼睛效应对一些反社会行为“无效果”; 当规范错觉较大且无规范干预时, 眼睛效应同样对一些反社会行为无效果。因此, 将以上4种争议观点整合为“不同感知规范条件下的眼睛效应”, 揭示了眼睛效应不稳定的原因, 为未来实证研究和实践应用提供理论基础。     

Substantive and procedural norms in normative multiagent systems

Procedural norms are instrumental norms addressed to agents playing a role in the normative system, for example to motivate these role playing agents to recognize violations or to apply sanctions. Procedural norms have first been discussed in law, where they address legal practitioners such as legislators, lawyers and policemen, but they are discussed now too in normative multiagent systems to motivate software agents. Procedural norms aim to achieve the social order specified using regulative norms like obligations and permissions, and constitutive norms like counts-as obligations. In this paper we formalize procedural, regulative and constitutive norms using input/output logic enriched with an agent ontology and an abstraction hierarchy. We show how our formalization explains Castelfranchi's notion of mutual empowerment, stating that not only the agents playing a role in a normative system are empowered by the normative system, but the normative system itself is also empowered by the agents playing a role in it. In our terminology, the agents are not only institutionally empowered, but they are also delegated normative goals from the system. Together, institutional empowerment and normative goal delegation constitute a mechanism which we call delegation of power, where agents acting on behalf of the normative system become in charge of recognizing which institutional facts follow from brute facts.     

Executive Functions in School‐age Children: Influence of Age,Gender, School Type and Parental Education

Summary: This study aimed to evaluate whether age, gender, type of school and parental education could predict executive performance in school‐age children. Unconstrained, phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks (n = 402), as well as the Hayling Sentence Completion Test (n = 275) and the Random Number Generation task (n = 274) were administered to typically developing 6‐to‐12‐year‐old children. A hierarchical regression analysis was performed (p ≤ 0.05). The most significant explanatory models involved child age and parental education, as well as these two variables in addition to the type of school attended by the child. The main individual predictors of executive performance were age and school type. These results may be related to structural and functional alterations in the brain, an increased repertoire of cognitive strategies, the effects of education and the intensity of environmental cognitive stimulation. These findings may contribute to the development of stimulation and intervention programs for EF in clinical and educational settings.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personal and general belief in a just world as judgement norms

Research on the belief in a just world (BJW) has focused on its intra-individual functions (e.g., psychological well-being) and its inter-individual consequences (e.g., derogation of victims). Recent theorizing, however, has indicated that the BJW may also have more societal functions and consequences, serving as a legitimizing device of the status quo. The studies in the current paper focus on this latter view and are based on Alves and Correia's ( 2008 ) research which found that the expression of high personal and general belief in a just world is injunctively normative. Two experimental studies aimed at ascertaining three issues: (1) the dimension(s) of social value (social utility and/or social desirability) on which the BJW normativity anchors; (2) whether the expression of moderate BJW is also injunctively normative; and (3) whether the injunctive normativity of the BJW is related to perceptions of truth. Results indicate that moderate and high personal and general BJW are normative. Yet, whereas the normativity of personal BJW anchors both on social utility and social desirability, that of general BJW anchors only on social utility. We discuss personal and general BJW as judgement norms, whose normativity may not be personally acknowledged (in the case of general BJW) and does not necessarily derive from being perceived as true, but from the fact that such norms carry social value at least in individualistic societies.     

Enhancing Social Responsibility and Prosocial Leadership to Prevent Aggression,Peer Victimization,and Emotional Problems in Elementary School Children

Testing the theories that form the basis of prevention programs can enhance our understanding of behavioral change and inform the development, coordination, and adaptation of prevention programs. However, theories of change showing the linkages from intervention program components to risk or protective factors to desired outcomes across time are rarely specified or tested. In this 2‐year longitudinal study, we test the theory that increases in two protective factors (i.e., children's prosocial leadership and their teachers’ expectations of social responsibility) targeted by the WITS Programs (Walk Away, Ignore, Talk it Out, and Seek Help) would be associated with declines in peer victimization, aggression, and emotional problems. Participants included Canadian students, in grades 1–4 at baseline (n = 1329) and their parents and teachers. Consistent with our theory of change, variability in program implementation (adherence and integration) and in children's use of program skills (child responsiveness) are related to increases in both protective factors. Increases in these protective factors are associated with subsequent declines in children's aggression, victimization, and emotional problems. We discuss how enhancement of these protective factors may operate to improve child outcomes and the need for theory‐based research to refine and improve the effectiveness of intervention strategies and to improve program scale‐up.     

Bringing together humanistic and intergroup perspectives to build a model of internalisation of normative social harmdoing

This article introduces a model of the internalisation of normative social harmdoing: the MINSOH. This model seeks to explain how group members internalise harmful social norms such that they personally endorse their groups' normative actions. To this aim, the MINSOH integrates two divergent yet complementary theoretical perspectives: self-determination theory and the social identity approach. These perspectives differ in their basic assumptions about the possibility for harm to become internalised, yet when integrated, they provide a powerful account of how harmdoing can become internalised. The MINSOH proposes specific conditions under which harmful normative actions become accepted by group members. This article outlines multiple self-determined motivations for harmdoing and discrete group processes that enable harmdoing to be internalised and autonomously enacted, and reviews factors that facilitate (i.e., strong/unique/comparative social identification; endorsement of ideological justifications) and block the internalisation process (presence of multiple identities/diverging norms; inclusive superordinate identity). Directions for future research are then discussed.     

Attraction toward physical activity as a moderator of socio-cognitive predictors of physical activity

Previous research highlighted gaps between socio-cognitive factors (e.g., intentions, social norms) and physical activity (PA) participation. Recently, researchers have asserted that considering affective processes may help bridge this gap. Leveraging the affective-reflective theory of physical inactivity and exercise, this study examined whether individuals’ attraction toward PA moderated the relationship between PA intentions and behaviors, and the relationship between social norms and PA intentions. Analysis of online survey data (N_T1 = 582; N_T2 = 327) provided evidence that social norms more strongly predicted PA intentions under conditions of lower attraction to PA. However, the results differed depending on how intentions were measured: Moderation was found for intention strength as the outcome, but no moderation was found for decisional intention as the outcome. The intentions-behavior relationship, despite nonsignificant interaction terms, showed patterns of positive moderation based on changes in simple slopes: Intentions more strongly predicted PA behavior at time 2 under conditions of higher attraction to PA. The findings align with recent theorizing that emphasizes the role of affect-related determinants when understanding and promoting PA. Practically, these results suggest that intervention strategies should differ according to the individuals’ current levels of attraction toward PA.     

The social network of solidarity with migrants: The role of perceived injunctive norms on intergroup helping behaviors

Using an ego-centered network approach, we examine across two studies whether and how injunctive network norms—behaviors that are approved by alters—are related to majority members’ decisions to participate in helping actions supporting migrants. We hypothesize that the more people perceive their personal social networks as positive toward humanitarian actions for migrants, the more they consider their opinions on migration issues as self-defining, and the more they are willing to mobilize in helping behaviors. With a name generator approach, we collected personal social network data among majority members of Belgian, mobilized volunteers (Study 1, N = 204) and Swiss, non-mobilized participants (Study 2, N = 247). Results demonstrate the impact of injunctive network norms in promoting and maintaining helping actions for migrants, and the role of self-defining attitudes. Overall, the results highlight the importance of injunctive norms within personal social networks for participation in intergroup helping behaviors.     

Monkey see,monkey do: The effect of social influence on selective‐exposure bias

Selective‐exposure bias refers to the tendency to predominantly seek out attitude‐consistent information and avoid attitude‐inconsistent information. Although researchers have proposed and tested several underlying psychological factors that might contribute to this tendency, the potential role of social influence has not been addressed. In the present research, we address this issue. In four experiments (total N = 645), participants’ selective‐exposure bias was significantly reduced when the bias was portrayed as non‐normative (vs. normative). In Experiment 4, we obtained evidence for the possibility that this social‐norm manipulation could result in effects on attitudes through information selection. Overall, this research contributes novel evidence for the effect of social influence on selective‐exposure bias.