What is it about?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, not everyone responded equally to public health guidance. People who already trusted science tended to comply with health advice regardless of what others around them were doing. But what about those with lower trust in science? Across three experiments with over 1,600 participants in Ireland and Kosovo, we tested whether exposing people to information about their ingroup's behavior could shift attitudes and actions. Participants read about how the majority of their fellow citizens were either complying or not complying with COVID-19 health guidelines, and we measured their own intentions to comply, their expectations of others, their sense of national solidarity, and their support for conspiracy beliefs. The key finding was consistent across all three studies: among those with low trust in science, exposure to an ingroup compliance norm increased personal health intentions, raised expectations that others would comply, boosted national solidarity, and reduced conspiracy beliefs. Among those with high trust in science, behavior and beliefs remained stable regardless of the norm condition. National solidarity emerged as the mechanism explaining these effects.
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Why is it important?
Public health crises expose a persistent challenge: the people least likely to follow health guidance are also the least responsive to scientific information alone. This research shows that social norms, specifically the visible compliance of fellow group members, can reach people that science communication often fails to move. By demonstrating this pattern across two culturally distinct countries and three experimental designs, including one real-world field study in Kosovo, the findings offer practical guidance for public health messaging. Rather than simply presenting scientific evidence, campaigns can leverage what people perceive their ingroup to be doing. The mediation by national solidarity also points to a broader lesson: in health crises, cohesion and collective identity are not just byproducts of good messaging but active ingredients in promoting protective behavior and reducing the spread of misinformation.
Perspectives
This research grew from questions about how to reach people during a crisis when the normal channels of trust, science communication and expert authority, are themselves contested. What struck me about the findings was how reliably national solidarity served as the bridge between norm exposure and behavior change. It suggested that what people were really responding to was not just information about others' actions, but a sense of being part of something together. That finding feels important beyond the pandemic context, for any situation where collective action depends on people who are not already convinced.
Dr Islam Borinca
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nudging (dis)trust in science: Exploring the interplay of social norms and scientific trust during public health crises, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, July 2024, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/jasp.13053.
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