Descriptive norms guide social behavior by informing what other people do. In a conceptual proposition, we suggest that descriptive norms also could signal what other people don’t do. Building on the evolutionary predisposition to more urgently attend to negative than positive information, we hypothesize that people are more strongly influenced by choices that other people avoid, than by choices that other people choose. Descriptive data in three experiments consistently demonstrated that more participants conformed to information about what other people don’t do (i.e., the don’t‐norm) than information about what other people do (i.e., the do‐norm). We found that don’t‐norms more strongly influenced pro‐environmental choices related to both energy efficiency (Experiment 1) and sustainable food consumption (Experiments 2 and 3). The increased influence of the don’t‐norm were supported in two cultures (Sweden and USA), in two decision contexts (accepting and rejecting), and when using two wordings (want vs. avoid and preferred vs. unpreferred). These results suggest that descriptive do‐ and don’t‐norms are conceptually distinct and that don’t‐norms exert stronger influential power.

中文翻译：

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社会规范中的“要做”和“不做”：描述性的“不规范”可增强合规性

描述性规范通过通知他人做什么来指导社会行为。在一个概念性命题中，我们建议描述性规范也可以表明其他人没有做。基于进化的倾向，即更积极地关注负面信息而不是正面信息，我们假设人们受他人回避的选择的影响要大于受他人选择的影响。在三个实验中的描述性数据始终表明，与其他人的行为（即行为准则）相比，更多的参与者对其他人不行为（即行为准则）的信息的认可程度更高。我们发现，规范并未对与能源效率（实验1）和可持续食品消费（实验2和3）相关的亲环境选择产生更大的影响。两种文化（瑞典和美国），两种决策环境（接受和拒绝）以及使用两种措辞（想要与否）时都支持“不规范”的影响力的增加。避免和偏爱与不偏爱）。这些结果表明，描述性的“不规范”在概念上是不同的，并且“不规范”发挥了更大的影响力。