Influencing Social Change Research
Attitude Change: Persuasion and Social Influence
By Wendy Wood
"This chapter reviews empirical and theoretical developments in research on social influence and message-based persuasion. The review emphasizes research published during the period from 1996–1998. Across these literatures, three central motives have been identified that generate attitude change and resistance. These involve concerns with the self, with others and the rewards/punishments they can provide, and with a valid understanding of reality."
"This chapter reviews the research on attitude change from what traditionally have been two separate areas of inquiry, the study of message-based persuasion and the study of social influence. In the persuasion paradigm, influence appeals typically include detailed argumentation that is presented to individual recipients in a context with only minimal social interaction. Social influence appeals, in contrast, usually consist solely of information about the source’s position, but these are delivered in more complex social settings that may include interaction among participants."
"Although these typologies each possess unique features, a common thread is the recognition that attitude change can be motivated by normative concerns for (a) ensuring the coherence and favorable evaluation of the self, and (b) ensuring satisfactory relations with others given the rewards/punishments they can provide, along with an informational concern for (c) understanding the entity or issue featured in influence appeals. Thus, for example, Cialdini & Trost (1998) identify the behavioral goals of social influence recipients as managing the self-concept, building and maintaining relationships, and acting effectively. Similarly, Chaiken et al (1996a) distinguished between people’s ego-defensive motives to achieve a valued, coherent self-identity, impression-related motives to convey a particular impression to others, and validity-seeking motives to accurately assess external reality."
"In social influence paradigms, researchers often have diagnosed the motive for attitude change from the continuity of recipients’ judgments across public and private settings. In public settings, recipients believe that the source of the appeal or members of their experimental group have surveillance over their responses, whereas in private settings, recipients believe that these others are unaware of their judgments. Supposedly, attitudes that maintain across public and private measures are internalized responses that result from the thoughtful processing associated with accuracy motives, whereas attitudes that are expressed in public but not private reflect normative pressures such as acceptance from the source or group."
"Accuracy motives correspond generally to a utilitarian concern with maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments, self-concept motives correspond to concerns for defending the ego against potential threats and for expressing one’s values, and social relation motives correspond to concerns for social adjustment and for obtaining social rewards and avoiding social punishments."
"For example, Lavine & Snyder (1996) reported that for people who are generally sensitive to the social consequences of their behavior (i.e. high self-monitors), appeals that emphasized the social adjustive functions of voting (e.g. enhancing one’s attractiveness to others) elicited more favorable evaluations and greater attitude change than appeals that emphasized its value-expressive functions (e.g. a way to express values). For people who rely on inner dispositions (i.e. low self-monitors), appeals with value-expressive arguments yielded more favorable evaluations and were more persuasive."
"Several models have been developed to explain the effects of mood on information processing and attitude change. According to Wegener & Petty (1996), mood effects vary with elaboration likelihood. Direct effects of mood on agreement emerge through low-elaboration processes, including association of a per- suasive appeal with positive or negative feelings (e.g. classical conditioning) and use of heuristic rules based on those feelings (e.g. ‘‘I feel bad so I must dislike it’’). When people are more extensively processing, how an attitude object makes them feel can serve as a persuasive argument. It also can bias the information considered, such as when people attend more to messages that match their mood or when they recall such information more accurately."
Norm Perception as a Vehicle for Social Change
By Margaret E. Tankard & Elizabeth Levy Paluck
"How can we change social norms, the standards describing typical or desirable behavior? Because individuals’ perceptions of norms guide their personal behavior, influencing these perceptions is one way to create social change. And yet individuals do not form perceptions of typical or desirable behavior in an unbiased manner."
"Despite these limitations on perception, individuals are motivated to under- stand what is normative in the communities to which they belong. This motivation arises from distinct but related desires to be accurate about social facts, to feel that they belong to their community, and to avoid social rejection from their community for deviating too far from the norm."
Design for Behaviour Change as a Driver for Sustainable Innovation: Challenges and Opportunities for Implementation in the Private and Public Sectors
By K. Niedderer, G. Ludden, S. J. Clune, D. Lockton, J. Mackrill, A. Morris, R. Cain, E. Gardiner, M. Evans, R. Gutteridge, & P. Hekkert
"Over the last decade, design for behaviour change has become increasingly recognised as a strategy for enabling social change."
"However, despite design’s ability to influence human behaviour, overall the eld of DfBC is still insufficiently understood. It is fragmented, and limited frameworks exist for its effective implementation in professional and public contexts.Inspiring as some of the successful examples of DfBC may be, they are not transparent, and therefore have not led to a coherent understanding of how DfBC methods can be used to lead to effective solutions."
Design for Socially Responsible Behavior: A Classification of Influence Based on Intended User Experience
By Nynke Tromp, Paul Hekkert, & Peter-Paul Verbeek
"None of these influential designs try to address the collective concerns directly with the user; instead, they trigger different individual concerns to stimulate the behavior that is desirable from a social perspective."
"Why is this distinction between social implication, behavior, and human-product interaction so important? When designers design products intending to change behavior, evidently there are reasons why the desired form of behavior is not automatically performed. The possible discrepancy between which behavior is desirable from a social perspective and how people behave shows a conflict between collective and individual concerns. The individual does not always embrace or prioritize collective concerns. What is best for the collective (and thus on average also for the individual) is not always felt or experienced as best for the individual or is easily overruled by other conflicting concerns."
"The power of design lies in its potential to bridge these concerns. A desired social implication, based on collective concerns, defines what behavior is desired from a social perspective. The designer’s task then is to address individual concerns in interaction with the product to elicit this behavior. Understanding the relationship between collective and individual concerns, whether they collide or coincide, helps to identify what type of influence and strategies can be effective."
"Designers can intervene either by discouraging the problematic behavior or by encouraging other desired or accepted behavior that is incompatible with that undesired behavior. But encouragement of behavior can certainly also be a goal in itself. This distinction is necessary in understanding how the design interferes with the user’s intention to behave in a certain manner and the user’s motivation to behave differently, as these both affect the user experience."
"Provide the user with arguments for specific behavior. This strategy provides the user with objective information about the consequences of certain behavior. A well-known example, shown in figure 15, is the cigarette package that contains explanations of the consequences of smoking. This strategy tries to address, shape, or alter attitudes, rather than directly facilitating behavior. Studies have shown that people prefer to make choices that can be more easily substantiated by verbal arguments, even when they would eventually appraise other options as better ones."
"Persuasive influence also is best applied when collective concerns are in line with individual concerns, which means they are easily identified or experienced as individual concerns. Many interventions that use persuasion are about health or safety issues, which are easily related to and accepted by the individual."
"Most, if not all, social issues deal with human behavior. Deliberately affecting behavior to stimulate specific social implications requires a redefinition of the role of the designer."
Reflections on 'Design Activism and Social Change'
Design History Society Annual Conference, September 7-10, 2011, Barcelona
By Grace Lees-Maffei
"Activism is defined as “the use of vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change”."
"Fuad-Luke moves design activism away from design reform when he defines it as “design thinking, imagination, and practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change;” he suggests, moreover, that design activism, in addition to achieving social change, can change the activists themselves."
By Wendy Wood
"This chapter reviews empirical and theoretical developments in research on social influence and message-based persuasion. The review emphasizes research published during the period from 1996–1998. Across these literatures, three central motives have been identified that generate attitude change and resistance. These involve concerns with the self, with others and the rewards/punishments they can provide, and with a valid understanding of reality."
"This chapter reviews the research on attitude change from what traditionally have been two separate areas of inquiry, the study of message-based persuasion and the study of social influence. In the persuasion paradigm, influence appeals typically include detailed argumentation that is presented to individual recipients in a context with only minimal social interaction. Social influence appeals, in contrast, usually consist solely of information about the source’s position, but these are delivered in more complex social settings that may include interaction among participants."
"Although these typologies each possess unique features, a common thread is the recognition that attitude change can be motivated by normative concerns for (a) ensuring the coherence and favorable evaluation of the self, and (b) ensuring satisfactory relations with others given the rewards/punishments they can provide, along with an informational concern for (c) understanding the entity or issue featured in influence appeals. Thus, for example, Cialdini & Trost (1998) identify the behavioral goals of social influence recipients as managing the self-concept, building and maintaining relationships, and acting effectively. Similarly, Chaiken et al (1996a) distinguished between people’s ego-defensive motives to achieve a valued, coherent self-identity, impression-related motives to convey a particular impression to others, and validity-seeking motives to accurately assess external reality."
"In social influence paradigms, researchers often have diagnosed the motive for attitude change from the continuity of recipients’ judgments across public and private settings. In public settings, recipients believe that the source of the appeal or members of their experimental group have surveillance over their responses, whereas in private settings, recipients believe that these others are unaware of their judgments. Supposedly, attitudes that maintain across public and private measures are internalized responses that result from the thoughtful processing associated with accuracy motives, whereas attitudes that are expressed in public but not private reflect normative pressures such as acceptance from the source or group."
"Accuracy motives correspond generally to a utilitarian concern with maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments, self-concept motives correspond to concerns for defending the ego against potential threats and for expressing one’s values, and social relation motives correspond to concerns for social adjustment and for obtaining social rewards and avoiding social punishments."
"For example, Lavine & Snyder (1996) reported that for people who are generally sensitive to the social consequences of their behavior (i.e. high self-monitors), appeals that emphasized the social adjustive functions of voting (e.g. enhancing one’s attractiveness to others) elicited more favorable evaluations and greater attitude change than appeals that emphasized its value-expressive functions (e.g. a way to express values). For people who rely on inner dispositions (i.e. low self-monitors), appeals with value-expressive arguments yielded more favorable evaluations and were more persuasive."
"Several models have been developed to explain the effects of mood on information processing and attitude change. According to Wegener & Petty (1996), mood effects vary with elaboration likelihood. Direct effects of mood on agreement emerge through low-elaboration processes, including association of a per- suasive appeal with positive or negative feelings (e.g. classical conditioning) and use of heuristic rules based on those feelings (e.g. ‘‘I feel bad so I must dislike it’’). When people are more extensively processing, how an attitude object makes them feel can serve as a persuasive argument. It also can bias the information considered, such as when people attend more to messages that match their mood or when they recall such information more accurately."
Norm Perception as a Vehicle for Social Change
By Margaret E. Tankard & Elizabeth Levy Paluck
"How can we change social norms, the standards describing typical or desirable behavior? Because individuals’ perceptions of norms guide their personal behavior, influencing these perceptions is one way to create social change. And yet individuals do not form perceptions of typical or desirable behavior in an unbiased manner."
"Despite these limitations on perception, individuals are motivated to under- stand what is normative in the communities to which they belong. This motivation arises from distinct but related desires to be accurate about social facts, to feel that they belong to their community, and to avoid social rejection from their community for deviating too far from the norm."
Design for Behaviour Change as a Driver for Sustainable Innovation: Challenges and Opportunities for Implementation in the Private and Public Sectors
By K. Niedderer, G. Ludden, S. J. Clune, D. Lockton, J. Mackrill, A. Morris, R. Cain, E. Gardiner, M. Evans, R. Gutteridge, & P. Hekkert
"Over the last decade, design for behaviour change has become increasingly recognised as a strategy for enabling social change."
"However, despite design’s ability to influence human behaviour, overall the eld of DfBC is still insufficiently understood. It is fragmented, and limited frameworks exist for its effective implementation in professional and public contexts.Inspiring as some of the successful examples of DfBC may be, they are not transparent, and therefore have not led to a coherent understanding of how DfBC methods can be used to lead to effective solutions."
Design for Socially Responsible Behavior: A Classification of Influence Based on Intended User Experience
By Nynke Tromp, Paul Hekkert, & Peter-Paul Verbeek
"Designers are using their design skills to tackle social problems. In these cases, designers apply design thinking and design methodologies to social issues to create innovative solutions. With this interest, education, safety, and health care have become domains for designers."
"When a person tries to persuade another to act differently, attitude, tone of voice and expressions affect the experience of the one being persuaded and, thus, his or her motivation to act."
"One of Latour’s elegant examples of designs that deliberately aims to alter behavior is the speed bump. Designers inscribe such objects with a message of “drive slowly to be responsible.” This inscription possibly leads to a prescription, such as “slow down,” and can lead to a subscription, like “slow down to avoid damaging the car.” In this particular example, the behavior of slowing down connects collective concerns of safety with individual concerns about the car. This example shows how products can comply with collective concerns and can mediate the corresponding desired behavior by addressing individual concerns in product use. As we show, this is a powerful aspect of design when designing for social issues."
"When a person tries to persuade another to act differently, attitude, tone of voice and expressions affect the experience of the one being persuaded and, thus, his or her motivation to act."
"One of Latour’s elegant examples of designs that deliberately aims to alter behavior is the speed bump. Designers inscribe such objects with a message of “drive slowly to be responsible.” This inscription possibly leads to a prescription, such as “slow down,” and can lead to a subscription, like “slow down to avoid damaging the car.” In this particular example, the behavior of slowing down connects collective concerns of safety with individual concerns about the car. This example shows how products can comply with collective concerns and can mediate the corresponding desired behavior by addressing individual concerns in product use. As we show, this is a powerful aspect of design when designing for social issues."
"None of these influential designs try to address the collective concerns directly with the user; instead, they trigger different individual concerns to stimulate the behavior that is desirable from a social perspective."
"Why is this distinction between social implication, behavior, and human-product interaction so important? When designers design products intending to change behavior, evidently there are reasons why the desired form of behavior is not automatically performed. The possible discrepancy between which behavior is desirable from a social perspective and how people behave shows a conflict between collective and individual concerns. The individual does not always embrace or prioritize collective concerns. What is best for the collective (and thus on average also for the individual) is not always felt or experienced as best for the individual or is easily overruled by other conflicting concerns."
"The power of design lies in its potential to bridge these concerns. A desired social implication, based on collective concerns, defines what behavior is desired from a social perspective. The designer’s task then is to address individual concerns in interaction with the product to elicit this behavior. Understanding the relationship between collective and individual concerns, whether they collide or coincide, helps to identify what type of influence and strategies can be effective."
"Designers can intervene either by discouraging the problematic behavior or by encouraging other desired or accepted behavior that is incompatible with that undesired behavior. But encouragement of behavior can certainly also be a goal in itself. This distinction is necessary in understanding how the design interferes with the user’s intention to behave in a certain manner and the user’s motivation to behave differently, as these both affect the user experience."
"Provide the user with arguments for specific behavior. This strategy provides the user with objective information about the consequences of certain behavior. A well-known example, shown in figure 15, is the cigarette package that contains explanations of the consequences of smoking. This strategy tries to address, shape, or alter attitudes, rather than directly facilitating behavior. Studies have shown that people prefer to make choices that can be more easily substantiated by verbal arguments, even when they would eventually appraise other options as better ones."
"Persuasive influence also is best applied when collective concerns are in line with individual concerns, which means they are easily identified or experienced as individual concerns. Many interventions that use persuasion are about health or safety issues, which are easily related to and accepted by the individual."
"Most, if not all, social issues deal with human behavior. Deliberately affecting behavior to stimulate specific social implications requires a redefinition of the role of the designer."
Reflections on 'Design Activism and Social Change'
Design History Society Annual Conference, September 7-10, 2011, Barcelona
By Grace Lees-Maffei
"Activism is defined as “the use of vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change”."
"Fuad-Luke moves design activism away from design reform when he defines it as “design thinking, imagination, and practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change;” he suggests, moreover, that design activism, in addition to achieving social change, can change the activists themselves."