Normative Behavior

A hotel sign says: "Most guests reuse their towels." Towel reuse jumps. Not because guests were persuaded — because they were informed of the norm, and humans are creatures who calibrate themselves to the tribe.

This is the normative force: we do not primarily ask "what is right?" We ask "what is done?" The group's behaviour is our default instruction manual, consulted constantly and admitted rarely. Littering rises in littered places; honesty rises where honesty is seen; the queue forms because the queue formed.

The wisdom for anyone trying to change behaviour — a child's, a team's, a country's — is to stop lecturing values and start displaying norms. The visible ordinary behaviour of the many is the strongest persuader ever discovered.

And the warning for yourself: your "own" habits are largely quotations from your surroundings. Choose your surroundings with the seriousness of someone choosing their habits — because that is, in fact, what you are choosing.