Learning Program on
Advances in Social Norms and Social Change
University of Pennsylvania, Summer 2013
Course directors: Cristina Bicchieri and Gerry Mackie
Course facilitators: Ryan Muldoon (Lead facilitator), Chris Melenovsky, Rob Willison,
Thomas Noah, Molly Sinderbrand, Jan Willem Lindemans, Giacomo Sillari
Resource UNICEF staff: Francesca Moneti
Course Schedule
First week
Monday July 1: Introduction and Norms Definition (Plenary) – Cohen Hall 402
8:30-9: Please meet at Cohen Hall, 249 South 36th Street. Please go inside and upstairs to room
402. The elevator also goes the whole way to the 4th floor. The front entrance will be closed
due to renovations, but you may enter from any other side of the building.
At this time, for those of you not staying in campus housing, Sarah will give you your ID Cards
as well as written information about how to access the internet. Those of you staying in campus
housing will receive your ID card and information about accessing the internet when you check
in to the dorms. It is a good idea to keep your ID card with you while you are at Penn as you
will need it to enter the library and your dorm building (if you are staying on campus).
At that time, Sarah will also give you your name tags, copies of the day's readings and other
logistical information. Please make sure you have your computers and/or other electronic
devices with which you would like to access Penn’s wireless internet.
Every day, between 10:00 and 10:15, there will be refreshments in the main conference room.
At the end of each morning session, Francesca Moneti will take a few minutes to remind
participants how the material presented relates and applies to UNICEF program issues.
9:00-9:30 (Cohen 402): Francesca Moneti - Introduction of the program and brief
overview of range of participants. Brief discussion of the relevance of the social norms
perspective to development problems and to the human-rights based approach to
development, including the dimensions of equity and sustainability. Reference will be
made to the applicability of this perspective across the UNICEF country program at all
phases: from situation analysis to design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
9:30-10:00 (Cohen 402): Cristina Bicchieri - The course will be outlined, and what
participants may expect from the program will be reviewed. The development of the
program experience brought by each participant into a full case study through the
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application of course materials will be explained and participants will be encouraged to
identify similarities and differences in case studies analyzed in their groups. The typical
day will involve a plenary lecture in the morning with limited discussion; and small
discussion groups in the afternoon allowing for close instruction, intense discussion, and
application of material to case studies. Co-Directors and facilitators will be introduced.
10:00-10:15 -- refreshments
10:15- 12:00 (Cohen 402): Cristina Bicchieri - Observing and Diagnosing behavior. We
begin with examples of several observable collective behaviors. In order to diagnose what
they are, we will investigate the reasons why people engage in such practices. Many of
them are strongly interdependent: we shall examine what sort of preferences and social
expectations support this interdependence. There are two types of social expectations that
may be involved: empirical (what others do) and normative (what others
approve/disapprove of). If there is interdependence, individuals’ preferences are
conditional on mutual expectations. Expectations and preferences are individually
necessary and jointly sufficient for a social norm to exist. Since different people may enact
an identical practice for very different reasons, the same practice may be a social norm in
one context and a simple custom without normative content in another. Difference
between new and established norms. Introduce diagnostic schema that helps identify social
norms. The diagnostics is important because the design of a program aiming to address
social norms will be different from one that aims to address simple customs. The theory of
norms we present will lead to specific measures of norms, introduced here.
Monday afternoon: (Group session) – See room schedule for group locations
1:30 - 3:30 (Cohen 402): Cristina Bicchieri - Observing and Diagnosing behavior
(continues)
3:30- 5:00 Participants will go to their first discussion sessions, each led by a facilitator,
where they will consolidate this knowledge and further apply it to their own personal and
development examples. They will be asked to identify empirical and normative
expectations in their case studies, and think of questions they would ask to their subjects to
elicit these expectations.
6-8: Opening Reception. Each participant will introduce himself to others, followed by
informal exchanges. This will be held outside room 311 in Cohen Hall, 249 South 36th St.
Tuesday July 2: Norm Creation and Change: the theory (Plenary) – Cohen Hall 402
9-12: Cristina Bicchieri – Common features of norm creation and change. Under what
circumstances a norm would emerge? What would induce norm change? Expectations
play a crucial role. What do we really know about people’s expectations? How do we elicit
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them? There are many ways. Once we assess beliefs, how shall we act? Norm change vs.
norm building. Two different schemas will be used to illustrate how to approach such
changes: examples of both cases (child marriage, CATS). What if people support a social
norm they dislike: pluralistic ignorance.
12:00-12:30 - Safety Presentation followed by tech support for anyone still needing
internet connection. Please stay in the main room.
Tuesday afternoon (Group session) – See room schedule for group locations
2-5: Participants will be asked to relate the material to their case studies, and identify how
to create, if relevant, new expectations in their particular cases.
5-6 Office Hours, Cristina Bicchieri, 491 Cohen Hall
Wednesday July 3: Norm Creation and Change: significant experiences (Plenary) –
Cohen Hall 402
9-12: Gerry Mackie - How to change norms. The importance of mobilizing a small core
group that over time brings about changes in beliefs and in reciprocal expectations
throughout a whole community, illustrated by FGM/C abandonment. Learn how an initial
change in personal beliefs about a certain practice can occur. No significant change will
follow unless the participants are convinced that others have also changed their beliefs and
will act accordingly. Concepts of core group, reevaluation of alternatives, trust generation,
coordinated shift of reciprocal expectations by public manifestations (by declarations,
oaths or otherwise), tipping point and organized diffusion will be introduced in narrative
form, and illustrated by reference to effective FGM/C abandonment programs and other
development experiences..
Wednesday afternoon (Group session) – See room schedule for group locations
2-5: Teaching assistants will review the material and encourage group questions and
discussion. Participants will describe dynamics of organized norm change in their own
personal and field experiences. They will examine their case study, and hypothesize how to
form a core group, revalue alternatives, organize diffusion of changed attitudes, and
effectively coordinate shift of reciprocal expectations.
5-6 Office Hours, Gerry Mackie, 312 Cohen Hall
Thursday July 4: Changing Views (Plenary) – Cohen Hall 402
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9-11: Gerry Mackie – Values Deliberations. How do individuals and groups change their
attitudes? The importance of credibility of message; how credibility is assessed. Obstacles
to attitude change: uniformity of a practice held in place by reciprocal expectations
obscures knowledge of, and evaluation of, better alternatives; a single attitude may be
entrenched by its location within a supporting network of attitudes, and thus the larger
network neighborhood must be engaged; many attitudes are automatic rather than
calculated, and it takes deliberative effort to examine old attitudes and automate new ones.
Effects of group deliberation generally, and in the revision of reciprocal expectations within
the reference group. How community deliberations elicit deeper values to motivate and
justify change in more shallowly valued social practices.
11-12: Therese Dooley - How to create a new norm. The case of community approaches to
total sanitation (CATS). Sustainability of change through development of new mutual
expectations.
Thursday afternoon (Group session) – See room schedule for group locations
2-5: Facilitators will review the material and encourage group questions and discussion.
Students identify different network topologies in their case studies and analyze how
information is transmitted in the network. They will be asked to name who they would
first mobilize in the community they are targeting for assistance.
5-6 Office Hours, Cristina Bicchieri, 491 Cohen Hall
Friday July 5: Large scale applications (Plenary) – Cohen Hall 402
9-12: Javier Guillot - Researcher and consultant at Corpovisionarios, a not-for-profit
NGO based in Bogotá (Colombia), created to investigate and foster positive collective
changes with a social-norms-based approach. Corpovisionarios was founded by Antanas
Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá, whose unconventional policies and social norm changeinspired strategies led to major improvements in the city. This session will further
illustrate and summarize prior course concepts with strong and effective field experiences.
It will include a presentation of the major theoretical and practical results of Mockus's
experience in Bogotá, and a description of their successful application in more recent field
projects in Colombia and Latin America. The discussion will focus on how expectations
were changed and trust/common knowledge obtained, highlighting policy innovations and
the characteristics that make them effective in changing or creating social norms.
Friday afternoon (Group session) – See room schedule for group locations
2-5: Participants will be asked to relate the week material to their case studies, and discuss
how to enact a change in expectations in their particular cases.
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Second week
Monday July 8: Understanding Social Networks (Plenary) – Cohen Hall 402
9-12:00: Ryan Muldoon - Presentation of social networks, social network analysis, and
the flow of persuasion and attitude change in different network topologies. Depending
on the structure of the network, information may flow freely or instead be thwarted, may
spread quickly or slowly, and may be more or less credible. Diagrams of actual social
networks from empirical studies will illustrate concepts. Network analysis guides
identification and mobilization of key individuals and groups in the social network, which
allows for efficient program design.
Monday afternoon (Group session) – See room schedule for group locations
2-5: Participants will be asked to identify the networks of norms, beliefs and values in
their case studies.
5-6 Office Hours, Gerry Mackie, 312 Cohen Hall
Tuesday July 9: Power, Gender (Plenary) – Cohen Hall 402
9-10: Gerry Mackie – Power analysis and social norms. We will relate power analysis
(powercube.net) and bargaining theory to social norms. Conjoint norms vs. disjoint norms.
What is power? How building new norms can increase people’s power-with and thereby
neutralize the power-over of others. The three faces of power are observable decisionmaking (visible), setting the agenda (hidden), and invisible (faceless, behind our backs).
Social-norms change can bring the excluded into the public sphere, neutralizing hidden
power. Such methods can also change the invisible power of inherited beliefs, roles, social
norms, and authority relations.
10-12: Lori Heise – Applying social-norms analysis to gender topics, especially genderbased violence.
Tuesday afternoon (Group session) – See room schedule for group locations
2-5: Consider power and gender aspects of case studies. Start to write case studies.
5-6 Office Hours, Cristina Bicchieri, 491 Cohen Hall
Wednesday July 10: Extrasocial Influences on Norms; Review and Conclusions
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9-10:30: Gerry Mackie – Multiple determination of social practices: past causes at different
levels, multiple levels of causation in present, multiple ways to change. How a social norm
constructed from expectations in a reference group can have been originally caused by
economic, physical, political and social factors external to that reference group. Social
norms may be changed or constructed by direct norms-change methods within the
reference groups, by indirect methods applied to causal factors beyond the reference
group, or both.
10:30-12: Cristina Bicchieri – Review and Conclusions.
2-5: Consider extrasocial influences on the topic of your case study. Continue to write case
studies.
5-6 Office Hours, Gerry Mackie, 312 Cohen Hall
Thursday July 11
9-12: Participants work on their case studies with individual assistance from facilitators.
Thursday afternoon: Participants Present Case Studies – See room schedule for group
locations
2-5: Facilitators will have sorted participants into several groups. Each participant will
present her case study in her assigned group. Nonparticipant personnel, including
Bicchieri and Mackie, will serially visit the four groups.
5:30-7:30: Closing Reception. This will be held outside room 311 in Cohen Hall, 249 South
36th St.
Friday July 12: Participants Present Case Studies – See room schedule for group
locations
9-12 and 1-4: Case study presentation, continued.
4-5: (Plenary) UNICEF senior staff will close the session. – Cohen Hall 402