Cultural difference in the persuasive impact of a role norm message

This study examines the persuasive impact of role norm appeal relative to the persuasive impact of traditional social norm strategies. Role norms constitute a particular form of social norms, stipulating what one ought to do as the holder of a particular role. This study hypothesizes that a role norm appeal produces greater persuasion than a social norm appeal, because social sanctions from related others tend to be perceived as more threatening than social sanctions from those that are unrelated. This study also predicts a relatively greater persuasive impact of role norm appeals in holistic cultures versus analytic cultures because holists tend to manifest a greater role-dependency compared to their analytic counterparts.;The predictions were examined employing a 2 (U.S., Korea) x 3 (role norm, social norm, no-norm control) independent groups design (N TOT = 702; NUS = 412, N KOR = 290). These three groups argue separate messages: firstly, that college students should avoid excessive drinking as a responsible child of his/her parents; second that excessive drinking is avoided because the person is a responsible community member; and lastly that drinking is avoided for the subject's own good, respectively. The participant's own behavioral intention (BI) and the projected behavioral intention of others (PBI) served as major dependent variables. Neither the main effect for treatment, nor the culture by treatment interaction, were statistically significant at level alpha = .05. However, a participant's culture had a significant main impact on both BI and PBI; across conditions, Korean students' BI and PBI scores indicated lower intentions to drink than the U.S. students. Path analyses indicate that, across cultures, social norm factors exert only minor impacts on behavioral intention; whereas participants' perception of problem severity explains more variance. Path models also suggest that Korean participants take a dual cognitive processing in which BI and PBI are explained by two separate sets of variables. This tendency remained less pronounced among the U.S. participants.