Janneke F. Joly

Silence and Table Manners: When Environments Activate Norms

Two studies tested the conditions under which an environment (e.g., library, restaurant) raises the relevance of environment-specific social norms (e.g., being quiet, using table manners). As hypothesized, the relevance of such norms is raised when environments are goal relevant (“I am going there later”) and when they are humanized with people or the remnants of their presence (e.g., a glass of wine on a table). Two studies show that goal-relevant environments and humanized environments raise the perceived importance of norms (Study 1) and the intention to conform to norms (Study 2). Interestingly, in both studies, these effects reach beyond norms related to the environments used in the studies.

The Norm-Activating Power of Celebrity: The Dynamics of Success and Influence

Social Psychology Quarterly retracts the article “The Norm-activating Power of Celebrity: The Dynamics of Success and Influence,” by Siegwart Lindenberg, Janneke F. Joly, and Diederik A. Stapel, which appeared in the March 2011 issue (74(1):98–120; DOI: 10.1177/0190272511398208). This retraction stems from the results of an investigation into the work of Diederik A. Stapel (https://www.commissielevelt.nl/noort-committee/publications-examined/), which finds strong evidence of fraud in the dataset supplied by Stapel. His coauthors had no knowledge of his actions and were not involved in the production of the fraudulent data. On the basis of previous evidence, we reasoned that even if people do not identify with celebrities, these celebrities can influence their behavior by activating bundles of social norms. Activating a norm means making both content and “oughtness” of the norm more directly relevant for behavior. We further reasoned that in order to have this norm-activating effect, celebrities have to have prestige. The question is whether they need to be seen as successful in order to have this effect. In four experimental studies, we examined the effects of a normative message presented by a celebrity on the activation of a target norm and of related and unrelated norms. As predicted, the normative message activated both target and related norms and did not activate unrelated norms. Also as expected, this ability to activate norms vanished entirely when the celebrities were tarnished by waning success. This result also shows that “success” and “lack of success” of a celebrity can be the result of relatively minor differences in media reporting. As expected, the norm-activating effect of celebrities was not mediated by self-reported measures of seeing celebrities as role models or of identifying with them. Implications for the impact of someone’s environment on norm conformity beyond positive and negative sanctions are discussed.

The Norm-Activating Power of Celebrity

Social Psychology Quarterly retracts the article “The Norm-activating Power of Celebrity: The Dynamics of Success and Influence,” by Siegwart Lindenberg, Janneke F. Joly, and Diederik A. Stapel, which appeared in the March 2011 issue (74(1):98–120; DOI: 10.1177/0190272511398208). This retraction stems from the results of an investigation into the work of Diederik A. Stapel (https://www.commissielevelt.nl/noort-committee/publications-examined/), which finds strong evidence of fraud in the dataset supplied by Stapel. His coauthors had no knowledge of his actions and were not involved in the production of the fraudulent data. On the basis of previous evidence, we reasoned that even if people do not identify with celebrities, these celebrities can influence their behavior by activating bundles of social norms. Activating a norm means making both content and “oughtness” of the norm more directly relevant for behavior. We further reasoned that in order to have this norm-activating effect, celebrities have to have prestige. The question is whether they need to be seen as successful in order to have this effect. In four experimental studies, we examined the effects of a normative message presented by a celebrity on the activation of a target norm and of related and unrelated norms. As predicted, the normative message activated both target and related norms and did not activate unrelated norms. Also as expected, this ability to activate norms vanished entirely when the celebrities were tarnished by waning success. This result also shows that “success” and “lack of success” of a celebrity can be the result of relatively minor differences in media reporting. As expected, the norm-activating effect of celebrities was not mediated by self-reported measures of seeing celebrities as role models or of identifying with them. Implications for the impact of someone’s environment on norm conformity beyond positive and negative sanctions are discussed.