Willingness to Engage Refugee-Oriented Collective Action in the Context of Dynamic Versus Static Norms

Social norms are typically defined as rules and behaviours that guide or restrict unwritten or unenacted social behaviour in a group or society (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). Also, social norms are generally related to a perceived social pressure to engage in or not engage in certain behaviours (Ajzen, 1991). It is common for social norms to work in an implicit way, relying on people's perceptions of appropriate behaviours to drive behavioural patterns and intents, but they may also be based on direct and explicit communication among group members (Hogg and Reid, 2006). Social norms have been classified as descriptive or injunctive. The descriptive norms are what most people do (Cialdini et al., 1990). In other words, it is social norms that direct behaviour with the perception of how others will behave (Cialdini et al., 1991). The injunctive norms also called the prescriptive norms (Cialdini et al., 1991, p. 203), are norms approved or disapproved by the majority of others. The imperative meaning of norms is a set of rules or beliefs that constitute morally acceptable or unacceptable behaviour. On the other hand, Sparkman and Walton (2017, 2019) examined social norms as dynamic versus static norms. Static descriptive norms are social norms that inform about the prevalence or frequency of a behaviour at a given time, while dynamic descriptive norms are social norms that describe how people's behaviour changes over time. In other words, dynamic norms draw attention to the change in attitudes, opinions or beliefs over time. This project aims to explore the relationship between dynamic versus static norms and target behaviour. We will investigate how and to what extent majority members would participate in activism to benefit refugees and the perceptions of majority members about the related norms.