The Impact Of Normative Consistency On Dietary Behavior: The Moderating Role Of Implicit Attitudes

Social norms,as individuals’ perception of other people’s thoughts or actions in social life,have a strong influence and prediction on the behavior of individuals,thus becoming a feasible means to be used to intervene in adverse behaviors such as alcoholism and environmental destruction.However,with the continuous deepening of research,scholars have found that it is not always effective to use social norms to intervene in bad behaviors,and normative information does not always influence individual behaviors in a consistent pattern.This makes the circle of social psychology begin the discussion of the mechanism of social norms.According to the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct,the motivation of individuals to comply with two types of norms points to different goals: injunctive norms point to both interpersonal and individual goals,while descriptive norms only point to individual internal needs.However,there are only a few studies that attempt to explain the function of social norms from the perspective of motivation.Implicit attitude is a trace of past experience that affects the cognitive,emotional,and behavioral tendencies of the individual to the social object.To a certain extent it reflects the individual’s internal demand,that is,internal motivation.Moreover,implicit attitude is more stable than explicit attitude.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to explore the motivation mechanism of social normative effect,namely the regulating effect of implicit attitude on the relationship between social norms and behaviors.In addition,the behavioral areas involved in previous studies are clearly biased in the motivation level of the overall sample(for example,90% of Americans like to drink alcohol,and almost everyone agrees that environmental protection is a commendable behavior).Therefore,based on the principle of neutral motivation,this study chose the diet behavior that few people have been involved in to verify our hypothesis.The study adopts the false investigation report method to start the normative information perception,and uses the implicit association test paradigm to classify the implicit attitude and uses the questionnaire method to measure the behavioral intention.Through two studies,it discusses the regulating effect of implicit attitude on the relationship between social norms and individual eating behaviors.Study 1 aims to investigate the effect of social norms on the suitability of dietary behavior;On the basis of research 1,Study 2 increases the variable of implicit attitude and tries to discuss the regulating effect of implicit attitude.This study included two sub-studies,which studied the injunctive norms and descriptive norms of the inconsistency of the test level of 2a,and investigated the compliance status of individuals with different implicit attitudes towards high-calorie food,and their differences in the perception of normative information levels.Study 2b on the basis of the research on 2a,start the participants consistently high levels of high-calorie diet injunctive norms and descriptive norms,examining whether individuals with different implicit attitude will obey the behavior of social norms is pointing to.The results of this study indicate that:(1)In terms of dietary behaviors,the effect of social norms is similar to that of other behaviors.The specific expression is that the perception of normative information on high levels of high-calorie diet enhances the individual’s choice of high-calorie food.(2)In terms of dietary behavior,the effects of the injunctive norms are not obvious,and the result shows that,in contrast to the criteria for the injunctive of a high-calorie diet and the inconsistencies of the descriptive level,the two types of normative perception that are consistently high levels are not contributing to the higher caloric food choice.(3)When the injunctive norms of high-calorie diet is inconsistent with the level of descriptive norms,the different implicit attitude of the individual to high-calorie food causes the different obedience mode of the individual to the social norms of high-calorie diet.The results show that the positive implicit attitude of the high-calorie food can make the individual subject to the high level of high-calorie diet descriptive norms,while the low level of injunctive norms does not determine the effect.The negative implicit attitude to high-calorie food can make individuals not affected by the high level of high-calorie diet norms,and take actions that are consistent with the low level of injunctive norms.(4)The different implicit attitudes for high-calorie food affect the perception of individuals’ normative information on high-calorie diet.In particular,compared with positive attitude subjects,negative attitude subjects show higher normative information perception level in the same standard starting condition.(5)When the injunctive norms of high-calorie diet is at a consistent high level with descriptive norms,the different implicit attitudes of individuals to high-calorie foods also lead to different modes of submission of individuals to the social norms of high-calorie diets.Specifically,the positive implicit attitude of high-calorie food can enable individuals to show obedience to two kinds of social norms of high-calorie diet.While the negative implicit attitude of high-calorie food can make the individual not affected by two kinds of social norms,which is contrary to the behaviors pointed by the two social norms.