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Charlotta Bergh
Brauer Lab
Final project, Spring 2016
COMMITMENT AND SOCIAL NORMS AS PREJUDICE REDUCTION
In 2011, McKenzie-Mohr published a booklet that contains six social marketing strategies for
increasing people’s sustainable behaviors. The aim of this literature review is to apply two of
these strategies, commitment and social norms, to the field of prejudice reduction. The outline
for the paper will be as following: First, the concepts of commitment will be defined. Second,
commitment will be applied to the field of prejudice reduction. Third, interventions using
commitment will be described, and finally conclusions. Social norms will thereafter be
presented in a similar manner. Finally, future directions for the two strategies will be presented.
To start of with commitment, it is described by McKenzie-Mohr (2011) as the
underlying reason for the increased likelihood of a person agreeing to a larger request, after
previously agreed on a smaller request. For example, imagine a person calling householders,
identifies himself as a member of a consumer group, and asks the householders if he could ask
them a few questions about their soap preferences. A few days later the same man calls back
and asks for a larger favor, having five or six people obtain an inventory of all the products in
the house. Because of having agreed upon the smaller request, householders have been found
to felt compelled to agree to the larger request (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011). The reason why people
did so, is based on the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). The theory’s basic idea
is that cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent with other cognitions leads to the arousal
of dissonance. As a consequence, people try to reduce dissonance by replacing those with or
simply by adding consonant cognitions.
Studies providing evidence the theory of cognitive dissonance and for
commitment as a strategy have been provided. In a landmark study by Linder, Cooper, and
Jones (1967), students were asked to write an essay about a law they did not agree upon.
Students whom believed they wrote it voluntarily changed their attitude toward the direction of
their essay, as opposed to students who were told nothing about voluntariness. Building on to
Charlotta Bergh
Brauer Lab
Final project, Spring 2016
that, the approach has been applied to the field of prejudice reduction in a number of studies.
On example is Eisenstadt and Leippe (1994), who showed reduction of prejudice as a result of
freedom of choice, when white college students were asked to write an essay supporting a policy
that benefitted Blacks. They also observed a generalization of attitude change beyond the
advocated topic. Another example is Son Hing, Li, and Zanna (2002), who managed to reduce
discriminatory behavior in aversive-racist students who first wrote a persuasive essay
advocating for fair treatment of minority students, and afterwards were reminded of their prior
prejudiced behavior. Hence, commitment has been shown to reduce prejudice.
Despite these findings, this approach has some limitations. The main limitation
of commitment as prejudice reduction is that central attitudes have often been shown to be
resistant to attitude change in cognitive dissonance experiments (e.g. Cooper & Mackie, 1983;
Sherman & Gorkin, 1980). However, Cooper and Mackie’s participants did not change attitude
due to the fact that they produced arguments that was counter to the attitude that defined their
membership in the group, which probably undermined the effects of cognitive dissonance.
Furthermore, another limitation of this approach is that studies with other commitment
techniques than writing about it are scarce. One exception is Heitland & Bohner (2010), whom
used a combined method of writing and giving a speech to create cognitive dissonance, with
positive results.
Moving on to commitment and interventions for reducing prejudice. Studies with
commitment in interventions are scarce. One exception is Rokeach Value Confrontation
Technique (Rokeach, 1971;1973, in Paluck and Green, 2009). Rokeach lectured college
students about (fictitious) research findings on values revealing people who value equality are
more likely to be sympathetic toward back Americans’ civil rights. Most people at that time
valued equality, but less favored Black civil rights. In postintervention questionnaires, there
Charlotta Bergh
Brauer Lab
Final project, Spring 2016
were increased support for black civil rights and enrolled students in an ethnic core course.
Thus, this technique seems to have changed the students’ attitude due to commitment.
However, the effectiveness of commitment as prejudice reduction interventions
seem to be ambiguous. Palluck and Green (2009) points out that the studies of previous
mentioned Rokeach Value Confrontation Technique are notable for its behavioral measures and
longitudinal design. However, the strengths of the results are as times mixed which might
indicate an overall ineffectiveness of the technique. In addition, one major critique regarding
commitment in prejudice reduction interventions overall, is difficulties in producing and
replicating dissonance effects due to individual differences in preference for consistency
(Cialdini, Trost and Newsom, 1995). In other words, people’s motive to be consistent with
one’s own responses and to appear consistent to others varies, leaving the result of the
interventions not as strong as one might have hoped.
In conclusion, commitment as a strategy have been shown to reduce prejudice.
However, experimentally tested interventions are few and the effectiveness of the strategy is
ambiguous. Strongest effectiveness would possibly be on a person with high motive for
consistence, who would both write and give a speech advocating for equality. Although, in
reality it might be hard to know beforehand who is motivated and not. As a final comment, the
strategy has also not been tested on its effectiveness to reduce other kinds of prejudice than
racial.
Moving on to the second intervention technique described by McKenzie-Mohr
(2011), social norms. It can be defined as “information about what other people are doing and
what they approve of” (Wilson, 2011, p. 152). Hence, the concept of social norms is about the
importance and the impact of other people on our own behavior. In a landmark study by Asch
(1955), participants were shown to alter their answers of which drawn line out of three that was
the longest, to be in line with normative, although clearly incorrect, answers by other
Charlotta Bergh
Brauer Lab
Final project, Spring 2016
participants. Since Asch’s ground breaking study, two types of norms have been identified:
descriptive and injunctive (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011). Descriptive norms indicate which
behaviors people normally engage in, while injunctive norms provide information on what
behaviors are approved or disapproved of. However, many interventions use both these norms,
as will be shown later in this paper.
When it comes to studies of social norms and prejudice reduction, there are several
supporting the strategy. Stangor, Sechrist and Jost (2001) showed that providing feedback to
European American participants that others held different beliefs about African Americans
changed the beliefs that they had about that group. The authors also found that providing
information that others agreed with the persons own racial stereotypes bolstered them such that
they were more resistant to change attitudes. Similarly, Wittenbrink and Henly (1996) showed
that high-prejudiced participants expressed more favorable attitudes toward African Americans
after being provided with feedback about others positive opinions about African Americans. In
addition, observing in-group members interacting with out-group members is also associated
with increased positive intergroup interactions (Dovidio et al, 2011). Consequently, all these
studies provide evidence for change in peoples’ attitudes. Also, they are doing so by combining
descriptive and injunctive norms, by providing information of both what behavior others engage
in and what behavior is being approved upon.
However, there are limitations to this approach. In Wittenbrink and Henly’s (1996)
study, is was shown that in comparison to high-prejudices participants, low-prejudice people
were not affected by others’ beliefs. It is unclear why these participants did not change attitude.
Furthermore, when it comes to the use of descriptive and injunctive norms, Prince (2014)
compared these two and their effect on college drinking. The results showed that greater
reductions in drinking followed the injunctive norm condition or the combined
injunctive/descriptive condition, than in the descriptive condition only. Whether or not these
Charlotta Bergh
Brauer Lab
Final project, Spring 2016
finding are applicable to prejudice reduction needs further investigation. Lastly, Palluck and
Green (2009) points out that laboratory interventions are often separated and abstracted from
their real world modalities. They claim that participants interpret messages they receive in these
studies differently depending on who delivers the message and in what manner. Therefore,
laboratory studies eliminate larger institutions and social processes in which interventions are
embedded, which might change the impact of the intervention. This leads us to look at the field
of interventions for prejudice reduction that uses social norms.
Prejudice reduction interventions based on social norms can be defined in three
categories; educational interventions in schools, media and entertainment interventions, and
peer influence or discussion programs. Reading interventions in schools is one of the biggest
contributions to the field of prejudice reduction. In a series of studies, children have been
assigned to read stories about other cultures (Wham, Barnhart & Cook, 1996), African, Native
American, disabled people (Clunies Ross & O’Meara, 1989; Fisher, 1968; Hughes, Bigler &
Levy, 2007; Yawkey, 1973), or about contact between different groups (Cameron & Rutland,
2006; Slone, Tarrasch & Hallis, 2000) with positive result. Reading interventions uses both
descriptive and injunctive norms to influence children’s perception of others. One advantage of
these interventions is that they usually evaluate longer than other field interventions (Palluck &
Green, 2009).
Examples where social norms in media and entertainment have been used are in
children’s multicultural television series (Mays, Henderson, Seidman & Steiner, 1975) and as
a radio soap opera (Paluck & Green, 2008). Because few of the programs used in media
interventions are based on theory, it is difficult to draw broad lessons from the pattern of their
findings according to Palluck and Green. However, the authors still argue that the results are in
general positive. In Palluck and Green’s study of an intervention using radio soap opera in
Rwanda, the researches found the program to affect the listeners’ behaviors. However, it did
Charlotta Bergh
Brauer Lab
Final project, Spring 2016
little change to their personal beliefs, which indicates the need for other strategies to accomplish
a full change in attitude.
Finally, peer influence interventions such as Anti-Defamation League Peer
Training program (Paluck, 2006), have shown that students are able to influence friends with
public behaviors such as speaking out against biased jokes. One main limitation of this approach
is that few field experiments have experimentally isolated the effects of normative
communication and discussion. However, these findings indicate that social norms of peer
discussion are promising intervention strategies.
In conclusion, different interventions with social norms to reduce prejudice have
been proven to have positive results. However, due to the fact that participants interpret the
messages differently, the effectiveness of the interventions might be difficult to anticipate.
Despite this, educational interventions in schools, media and entertainment interventions, and
peer influence or discussion programs, have all shown to be promising techniques to reduce
prejudice.
In closing, both commitment and social norms seem to have potential for being
effective prejudice reduction strategies. At this point, social norms have the strongest support
in both experimental and field studies. Further investigation of the effectiveness of commitment
is needed, by testing more interventions using commitment and by using other techniques than
writing. Another suggestion for future interventions, would be to combine these two strategies.
McKenzie-Mohr (2011) states that both commitment and social norms are effective in
enhancing motivation to act differently, although they work in somewhat different ways. People
with low motivation for consistence, would maybe be more willing to commit if they were also
influenced by descriptive and injunctive social norms. It could be something for the Brauer Lab
to find out.
Charlotta Bergh
Brauer Lab
Final project, Spring 2016
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