One of the contributing factors that promotes success in planning for long term goals is positive social reinforcement, and/or strong societal norms.
![People are coercing someone to do something.] (/assets/images/tpb03.png) Credit to The Royal Deviant</sub></sup>
Normally “peer pressure” is viewed as a negative thing, but in some cases it can help incentivize people to achieve long term goals better than if they had no social reinforcement at all. Benevolent peer pressure, or social reinforcement, could include direct feedback from a person’s immediate social community or include implicit societal norms. For example, a person’s family and overall societal norms may both contribute to a person staying incentivized to finish college over a long period of time.
![A screenshot of Facebook’s election feature] (/assets/images/tpb04.png) Credit to Facebook</sub></sup>
Facebook encouraged people to vote by highlighting how many other people have voted, both overall Facebook users and their friends and family. Since voting is a strong societal norm, surfacing stats about how many people a user knows that have voted could encourage a person to prioritize voting.
AN INTERVENTION TO GET HIGH SCHOOLERS TO FINISH SCHOOL USING THIS METHOD “At the end of the study period, 74% of the sample was found to have completed high school. The completion rate in the total initial sample of 262 students was 60%” It is important to remember that societal values are not universal, so highlighting familial or societal norms is difficult to do for broad audiences or for specific actions. This also has many ethical implications, as using social influence to change behavior forces a strong power dynamic. Finally, if a person doesn’t align with social norms and they’re made aware of it, this could cause feelings of social isolation, which can be damaging.
This method should be used carefully and thoughtfully.
