Social Norms Atlas: Understanding global social norms and related concepts

Social Norms Atlas: Understanding global social norms and related concepts

There is increasing global awareness of the importance of context in shaping human behavior and the role that social norms play in social and behavior change. Thus, a surge of interest and funding has been directed towards exploring the potential of social norms concepts and theory to inform the design of effective and sensitive interventions aimed at facilitating social norms change.

Despite this interest, the ability of program designers and managers to apply social norms concepts and theory is inconsistent (Cislaghi & Heise, 2018), and their work may not fulfill its promise. For example, differentiating social norms from attitudes and behaviors still presents challenges for practitioners and programmers working in norms-shifting interventions. Yet this distinction has practical implications for identifying which strategies to use to change behavior and for selecting appropriate measures to evaluate program effect.

The present document—the Social Norms Atlas—aims to provide guidance and further understanding of social norms and related concepts. It is written for program planners, implementers, evaluators, and researchers interested in building their social norms vocabulary and knowledge and strengthening their understanding of the social norms relevant to particular sectors. This document provides a high-level overview of illustrative social norms and related behaviors and attitudes in specific sectors and contexts and is meant to be used as a starting point for users to further consider norms particular to their sector(s) of interest. It also highlights how social norms may cut across development sectors.

The Social Norms Atlas is one of several guidance documents that the Learning Collaborative has developed to contribute knowledge and advance the field of social norms and behavior change programming.