ArticleNature human behaviour2020
The promise and the peril of using social influence to reverse harmful traditions.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Contagion and escalation of rule violations.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Integrating behavioural experimental findings into dynamical models to inform social change interventions.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- The power of leadership in changing social norms in heterogeneous societies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Why people follow rules.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- A norm about harvest division is maintained by a desire to follow tradition, not by social policing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A complex adaptive systems model of labour reciprocity and normative reasoning in swidden agriculture.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- The cover of randomness: validating implicit methods for the study of sensitive topics.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Anticonformists catalyze societal transitions and facilitate the expression of evolving preferences.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Prestige bias in cultural evolutionary dynamics.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Article
- Modelling social norms: an integration of the norm-utility approach with beliefs dynamics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- When norm change hurts.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Green preferences sustain greenwashing: challenges in the cultural transition to a sustainable future.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Long-distance social relationships can both undercut and promote local natural resource management.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Agentic processes in cultural evolution: relevance to Anthropocene sustainability.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Cooperation without punishment.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Global phylogenetic analysis reveals multiple origins and correlates of genital mutilation/cutting.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
- Evidence supporting a cultural evolutionary theory of prosocial religions in contemporary workplace safety data.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Source-sink behavioural dynamics limit institutional evolution in a group-structured society.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Paradox of diversity in the collective brain.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For a policy-maker promoting the end of a harmful tradition, conformist social influence is a compelling mechanism. If an intervention convinces enough people to abandon the tradition, this can spill over and induce others to follow. A key objective is thus to activate such spillovers and amplify an intervention's effects. With female genital cutting as a motivating example, we develop empirically informed analytical and simulation models to examine this idea. Even if conformity pervades decision-making, spillovers can range from irrelevant to indispensable. Our analysis highlights three considerations. First, ordinary forms of individual heterogeneity can severely limit spillovers, and understanding the heterogeneity in a population is essential. Second, although interventions often target samples of the population biased towards ending the harmful tradition, targeting a representative sample is a more robust way to achieve spillovers. Finally, if the harmful tradition contributes to group identity, the success of spillovers can depend critically on disrupting the link between identity and tradition.
Indexed as
Identifiers
31792402What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.