The Power of Peer influence: Harnessing Shifting Social Norms to Curb College Students’ Drinking

Newswise — A pilot study at the University of Washington in Seattle has shown that messaging on shifting “drinking norms” could help curb intentions to use alcohol among college students. Young people’s drinking is known to be influenced by their (often erroneous) perceptions of how their peers drink. To date, social norms interventions on campuses have focused on correcting students’ overestimates of how much alcohol their peers are consuming. Such interventions reflect the current state of normative behavior, known as static norms. In contrast, dynamic norms emphasize that a behavioral norm is shifting over time. These norms could be important in health behavior interventions, given emerging evidence that people align their behavior with social norms that they anticipate being prevalent in the future, even more so than the current norm. The new study, reported in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, tested the concept of integrating dynamic norms messaging into alcohol interventions.

The data were from 461 students who had been randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group was exposed to dynamic norms messaging highlighting that heavy drinking among college students has steadily decreased over the past six years. The second group was exposed to static norms messaging, stating only the current drinking norms. The third group, a control group, received no normative information. Straight after the messaging intervention, participants were asked how they think drinking norms among college students may change over the next several years. The group that had been exposed to dynamic norms messaging estimated that future drinking norms would generally decrease, and that more students will refrain from heavy drinking. Students in the static norms and control groups, on the other hand, estimated that future drinking norms would increase. Next, participants were asked about their own intentions for alcohol use over the next month. Students in the dynamic norms group reported that they would consume fewer drinks per week, and would engage in fewer binge drinking episodes, than those in the static norms and control groups.

Despite the clear differences in drinking intention, at one month after the messaging intervention the three groups did not differ significantly in actual drinking behavior (weekly drinks or binge drinking episodes) reported by participants. As the study took place during the Covid pandemic, this may be because of reduced opportunity to engage in and observe social drinking on campus. The researchers suggest that future studies on dynamic norms messaging could look to strengthen the effect of intentions on subsequent behaviors. For example, as well as highlighting decreasing drinking norms, dynamic norms messaging could also provide supplemental messages around behaviors that students are engaging in that help them refrain from alcohol use. It will also be important to identify the most effective way of presenting dynamic norms messaging.

In summary, although further research is needed, the findings provide proof-of-concept that dynamic norms messaging may be a prudent strategy for reducing alcohol use intentions among college students.

Such interventions could be integrated into or used alongside existing norm-correcting strategies.

Leveraging dynamic norms to reduce alcohol use among college students: A proof-of-concept

experimental study. S. Graupensperger, C. M. Lee, M. E. Larimer (pages xxx).

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