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A Family of Norms: Related Beliefs about Female Labor Force Participation

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Elif Incekara Hafalir explores how correcting misperceptions about societal support for women working outside the home influences other related beliefs

Image courtesy of interviewee. October 8, 2024

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The study discusses how correcting misperceptions of social norms can impact beliefs related to closely associated norms, particularly in the context of female labor force participation. Social norms are influential in shaping behaviors, often leading individuals to conform even against their preferences to avoid social costs. Positive social norms are crucial for achieving desired outcomes, such as increasing women’s participation in the workforce.

The research highlights that sometimes, barriers to these outcomes might stem not from negative social norms but from underestimating existing positive norms—that is, people may believe that societal support for women's work outside the home is weaker than it actually is. Correcting these misperceptions offers a potential "low-hanging fruit" for policymakers since changing entrenched negative norms can be challenging.

The authors propose an "information treatment" approach, where providing accurate information about societal attitudes can improve related beliefs and outcomes. The study aims to investigate whether correcting misperceptions about one specific norm can also lead to changes in related norms, examining the concept of spillover effects.

Using a randomized control trial with Saudi male and female university students, the study found that despite promising approaches, the correction of misperceptions led to unexpected negative beliefs about other norms, such as those related to the potential impact of mothers working on family life. This video discovering suggests that when addressing one norm, individuals may reassess other related beliefs in ways that do not align with expectations, possibly due to cognitive dissonance or self-serving belief distortion.

The implications of this research suggest that it is crucial for researchers and policymakers to understand not only how to change perceptions of one specific norm but also how those changes may inadvertently affect related beliefs and norms, emphasizing the importance of further investigation into these complex relationships.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Impact of Social Norms on Behavior**: Social norms significantly influence individual behavior, often compelling people to act in accordance with societal expectations even when they may not have personal preferences to do so. This underscores the importance of correcting misperceptions about these norms to achieve desired behavioral outcomes.

2. **Misperception of Positive Norms**: The study highlights that sometimes negative social outcomes are not due to harmful norms but rather the misperception of positive norms. For example, women may choose not to participate in the workforce because they underestimate societal support for working outside the home.

3. **Information Treatments as a Solution**: Providing accurate information to correct misperceptions about social norms can effectively improve behaviors and outcomes. This has been demonstrated in past studies, which inform the current research's approach of using "information provision" to raise awareness about supportive norms for female labor participation.

4. **Exploration of Spillover Effects**: The research seeks to understand how correcting misperceptions about one norm can influence related beliefs and behaviors. It examines whether addressing one specific misperceived norm can lead to positive or negative spillover effects on other norms related to female labor participation.

5. **Surprising Outcomes and Mechanisms**: The study uncovered surprising negative spillover effects, where correcting beliefs about support for female workforce participation led to increased concerns about the negative impact on children when mothers work. This deviation is linked to psychological mechanisms such as cognitive dissonance and self-serving belief distortion, suggesting that individuals might adjust their beliefs in response to maintain consistency in the face of new information.

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Here are some key quotes from the video that capture the main ideas:

1. **Social Norms' Power**: "Social norms are very powerful and affect behavior... they may just behave that way in order not to defy these social norms."

2. **Social Cost of Defying Norms**: "Because if you defy the norms, there is going to be some social cost."

3. **Importance of Positive Norms**: "It is important to have positive social norms in order to achieve desired outcomes."

4. **Misperceptions of Norms**: "Sometimes it is not the negative social norms preventing the desired outcomes, but the misperception or underestimation of positive norms."

5. **Information Treatment**: "We just need to correct underestimation of the positive norms... this type of information treatment has been done in the literature in many different convideos."

6. **Spillover Effects**: "We are investigating... if we correct one of the misperceived norms, what is gonna happen to the others? Is there going to be spillover effects?"

7. **Observations on Perceptions**: "We found... misperception, we wanted to collect this misperception."

8. **Negative Spillover Effects**: "This positive information we found have backfired... the treatment subjects started to believe that a larger share of others think that children will suffer when mother works."

9. **Meta Beliefs**: "People have these overarching beliefs... this meta belief is influenced by a variety of sub-norms."

10. **Cognitive Dissonance Theory**: "Individuals may change their beliefs or find justifications for inconsistencies... to reduce this discomfort, they may revise their closely related beliefs in the negative direction."

11. **Self-Serving Belief Distortion**: "People selectively interpret information in order to hold on to beliefs that will make future look bright."

12. **Impact of Correcting Misperceptions**: "Correcting misperceptions may affect not only the outcomes, but also closely related beliefs."

These quotes summarize the study's focus on social norms, the impact of correcting misconceptions regarding norms, and highlight the complexities involved in changing beliefs around social patterns, particularly in the convideo of female labor force participation.

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In our study, we aim to understand

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how correcting misperceptions

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of social norms can affect beliefs about,

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closely related norms.

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So it is well known that social norms are very powerful,

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powerful and affect, behavior.

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Uh, so they are so powerful that sometimes people, I mean,

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even if they do not have preferences, personal preferences

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to behave certain way, a certain way, they may just,

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behave that way in order not to defy these social norms.

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For example, sometimes people, I mean,

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they may wanna lie in order to gain some monetary,

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monetary gain, let's say.

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But because it is social norm, not to lie, they may not lie,

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or they, they don't care about littering.

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They don't, they don't care about recycling,

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but they end up recycling and then they end up not littering

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because it is social norm to, I mean,

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to do those things, right?

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Because they don't wanna defy the norms,

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because if you defy the norms, there is going

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to be some social cost.

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So we know these social norms are very powerful as a result,

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it is important to have positive social norms in order

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to achieve desired outcomes.

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Let's say that we are interested in female labor force

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participation, increasing female labor force participation

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in a country with a very low,

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I mean workforce participation by women, right?

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Such as Saudi Arabia.

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If the norms in the environment are not positive for females

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to work outside of form, even women,

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even if women do want to work, they may end up not working

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because they don't wanna defy these social norms.

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So this is, if this is the case, it is a hard problem

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to solve because it is not easy to change social norms.

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These social norms develop in a long period of time.

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But however, sometimes it is not the negative social norms,

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preventing the desired outcomes, but the misperception

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or underestimation of positive norms, for example,

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in the environment, maybe everyone is okay for women

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to work outside of home,

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but somehow people are underestimating this positive norm,

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and they think that it is not okay.

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I mean, they think that the society thinks

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that it is not okay for women to work outside of home.

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So this is a, the misperception in this direction

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is a low hanging fruit for policymakers

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and practitioners, researchers,

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because we don't need to change the norms.

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The norms are already positive.

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We just need to correct underestimation

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of the positive norms.

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So, this type of in, so I mean,

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if you correct these, misperceived notes, I mean,

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how do you, how do you correct these misperceptions?

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How do you correct these underestimations?

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You can give information about, I mean, what is the, what,

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what the correct norm is?

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For example, you can tell them you think

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that actually society does not support for women

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to work outside of home.

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Actually, most of the people think that it is okay for women

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to work outside of home, right?

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So this is a very simple information treatment.

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We call it information treatment,

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information provision, right?

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This type of information provision treatment has been done

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in the literature in many different

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contexts, context.

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And, it has been shown that

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the outcomes might be improved,

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female labor force participation might be improved,

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and the, whatever the desired outcome is,

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it might be improved

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by just using this information treatments.

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If there are misperceptions in our study,

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unlike these previous studies, we are focusing on

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how collecting misperceptions about one specific norm

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can affect closely related norms rather than just

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looking at the outcomes.

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This is important because there might be multiple norms,

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multiple norms influencing the behavior we are trying

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to improve, let's say

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that we wanna improve the female labor

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force participation, right?

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But there is not only one norm affecting this outcome.

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I mean, one norm might be whether it's acceptable for women

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to work outside of home.

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Another norm might be whether family, life

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and children will suffer when mother works

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outside, outside of home.

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It looks like there are, I mean, multiple, norms,

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multiple subie feeding into this meta belief about whether

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women should be participating in the workforce.

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If there are multiple norms, if I correct one of them only,

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I don't know what is gonna happen to the other norms.

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So that is what we are investigating.

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We are asking if we correct one of the misperceived norms,

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what is gonna happen to the others?

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Is there going to be spillover effects?

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That is what we are doing in this paper.

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There are lots

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of papers about factors affecting female labor force

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participation among, among them,

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the social norms have been explored, explored

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by previous, researchers recently.

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Uh, Christina Bihi has lots of, lots of papers

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discussing the effect

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of social norms in shaping individual

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behavior and decision making.

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But in addition to the literature on social norms,

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recently researchers started

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to become interested in misperception of social norms.

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In fact, there is this review article by Burstein

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and Yang, Burstein and Yang 2022.

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They look at all these papers, research studies,

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looking at the misperceptions

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and looking at the correction of these misperceptions

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and how they affect the outcomes.

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I think that paper is going to be really useful for someone

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who is interested in misperceptions correction of correction

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of misperceptions and their effects on outcomes.

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Our paper is closely related

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to is Stein At all 20 20, 20 20 paper,

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they survey Saudi med males about

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what they think about women working outside of home.

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So they find that Saudi men are fine for work, fine

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for women to work outside of home,

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but they are underestimating the opinions of others.

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I mean, marriot, Saudi men.

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As a result, they are underestimating

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the positive social norm.

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So when they tell this man that actually most of the people

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around you are supportive for women to work outside of home,

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they find that the outcomes for the wives of these Saudi men

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increased in the labor market.

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I mean, these, their wives started to apply

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for jobs more, started to have more interviews and so on.

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So they find there's a positive effect of these, I mean,

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information treatments on outcomes.

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So unlike these studies

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that primarily focus on correcting misperception

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of one single norm

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and its effects on desired outcomes,

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our study examines the spillover effects

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of information treatments, on related beliefs.

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So we are not only interested in outcomes,

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we are interested in how the related,

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closely related beliefs are affected

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by the information treatments, which aim

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to correct some misperceptions.

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So that paper was,

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they had participants were Saudi Marriot males.

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In our study, we surveyed, Saudi male

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and female university students from a large public

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university in Saudi Arabia.

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So we conducted an online survey study with three waves,

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and in every way,

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we asked our participants their personal beliefs

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and their perception of norms related

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to female labor force participation.

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For example, we ask them whether, I mean,

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they think it's okay for women to work outside of home,

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but we did not only ask that question, remember

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that there are multiple norms affecting female

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labor participation.

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We did not only ask about the norm,

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regarding women working outside of home,

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but we also asked them whether they believe family, life

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and children will suffer if Mother works,

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and what their perception of, perception

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of the society's, beliefs about this.

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Uh, the, the same thing.

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Um, so we, we ask participant to guess,

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what others think, on these same questions.

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We ask these same questions in every wave in order

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to understand whether what we measured is consistent,

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o over time.

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And in the first

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Two waves, we found that, the norms

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for women to work outside of home is positive.

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Everyone thinks that women should be allowed to work outside

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of home, however, they are severe underestimated.

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Once we found this misperception, we wanted

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to collect this misperception in the third wave,

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and we collected this misperception by run,

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running a randomized control trial.

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What we did was for half of the random selected subjects,

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they were in the treatment group.

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The other half we were in the control group.

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In the treatment group, we told them what is the, I mean,

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real support for women to work outside of home

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and in the control group,

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they did not receive any information.

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And then we compare these two groups in terms

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of their related beliefs on other questions, such as

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children, whether children will suffer when mother works,

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because we are interested in spillover effects

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on related beliefs.

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We found that the information, the, with the positive,

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remember we are giving them a positive information

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for vma female labor participation, right?

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But this positive information we found have backfired,

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and the treatment subjects started to believe

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that a larger share of others think

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that children will suffer when mother works.

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So this was kind of, I mean, surprising for us,

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because you may think that may,

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there may be some positive spill over effect.

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Maybe their beliefs will improve in every domain,

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but we find the, I mean, negative effect.

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So, what might be the possible, mechanisms is that,

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so people have these overarching beliefs.

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We can call it meta beliefs, if you like,

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about female labor participation.

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And this meta belief is influenced by a variety

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of subie, right?

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One, one subie might be whether women should be

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working outside of home.

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Another subie might be whether children will suffer or not.

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When mother works, there are multiple subie feeding

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into the meta belief, right?

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So the existence, the existence of these,

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multiple subie subie creates a room for individuals

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to interpret n information in different ways.

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This interpretation process can be understood

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through the lens of cognitive dizziness theory

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and the self-serving belief distortion.

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Cognitive dissonance theory says

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that people experience psychological discomfort when,

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when they hold conflicting beliefs

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or when there's an information contradicting

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their existing beliefs, right?

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So, this, in order to reduce this discomfort,

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individuals may change their beliefs

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or find justifications for inconsistencies.

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For example, a person underestimating societal support

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for women working outside of home.

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When they receive this positive information, they start

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to feel this cognitive dissonance.

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In order to reduce this discomfort, they may revise their,

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closely related beliefs in the negative direction so

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that everything is going to make sense.

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So this is one explanation, one mechanism.

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It may be the other is self-serving belief distortion,

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what we call self-serving belief distortion.

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Um, it suggests that people selectively

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interpret information in order to hold on to beliefs

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that will make future look bright.

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For example, think about a young Saudi,

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male university student, who wants to hold on to belief

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that women entering the workforce is not gonna create

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additional competition,

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or it is not going to disrupt traditional gender roles

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despite this new information we are giving to them, right?

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To maintain this comforting belief, they may update another

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subie in the negative direction so

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that they can hold onto discomforting belief

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that the labor market is not going to be, I mean,

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competitive that much.

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So that might be another mechanism, for this finding.

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One thing we can say from this research is

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that correcting misperceptions

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may affect not only the outcomes,

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but also closely related beliefs.

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This is very important for researchers to, I mean,

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to pay attention to,

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because remember, we wanna increase the desired outcomes.

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One way to do that, to correct these underestimation

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of positive social norms.

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That is what all the research studies have been

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doing before, right?

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But when we correct one misperception on a specific norm,

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we don't know what is gonna happen

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to another closely related norm, which is also important

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for the, for the desired outcome.

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In our case, we may labor participation.

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I think researchers will, should pay attention to these,

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spillover effects, investigate them more,

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and also it'll be fruitful, to investigate.

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Okay? Uh, these, I mean the mechanisms, closely.

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Why, why do we have these spillover effects?

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What are the mechanisms? Can we test?

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Can we disentangle different, possible mechanisms?

Impact of Correcting Misperceptions on Social Norms

00:00:00 - In our study, we aim to understand how correcting misperceptions of social norms can affect beliefs about, closely related norms. So it is well known that social norms are very powerful, powerful and affect, behavior. so they are so powerful that sometimes people, I mean, even if they do not have preferences, personal preferences to behave certain way, a certain way, they may just, behave that way in order not to defy these social norms.

00:00:34 - they may wanna lie in order to gain some monetary, monetary gain, let's say. But because it is social norm, not to lie, they may not lie, or they, they don't care about littering. They don't, they don't care about recycling, but they end up recycling and then they end up not littering because it is social norm to, I mean, to do those things, right? Because they don't wanna defy the norms, because if you defy the norms, there is going to be some social cost.

00:01:08 - it is important to have positive social norms in order to achieve desired outcomes. Let's say that we are interested in female labor force participation, increasing female labor force participation in a country with a very low, I mean workforce participation by women, right? Such as Saudi Arabia. If the norms in the environment are not positive for females to work outside of form, even women,

Addressing Misperceptions of Positive Social Norms

00:01:37 - because they don't wanna defy these social norms. So this is, if this is the case, it is a hard problem to solve because it is not easy to change social norms. These social norms develop in a long period of time. But however, sometimes it is not the negative social norms, preventing the desired outcomes, but the misperception or underestimation of positive norms, for example,

00:02:11 - to work outside of home, but somehow people are underestimating this positive norm, and they think that it is not okay. I mean, they think that the society thinks that it is not okay for women to work outside of home. So this is a, the misperception in this direction is a low hanging fruit for policymakers and practitioners, researchers, because we don't need to change the norms.

00:02:40 - We just need to correct underestimation of the positive norms. So, this type of in, so I mean, if you correct these, misperceived notes, I mean, how do you, how do you correct these misperceptions? How do you correct these underestimations? You can give information about, I mean, what is the, what, what the correct norm is? For example, you can tell them you think that actually society does not support for women to work outside of home.

Impact of Information Treatment on Social Norms and Female Labor Participation

00:03:12 - to work outside of home, right? So this is a very simple information treatment. We call it information treatment, information provision, right? This type of information provision treatment has been done in the literature in many different contexts, context. And, it has been shown that the outcomes might be improved, female labor force participation might be improved, and the, whatever the desired outcome is,

00:03:40 - by just using this information treatments. If there are misperceptions in our study, unlike these previous studies, we are focusing on how collecting misperceptions about one specific norm can affect closely related norms rather than just looking at the outcomes. This is important because there might be multiple norms, multiple norms influencing the behavior we are trying to improve, let's say

00:04:11 - force participation, right? But there is not only one norm affecting this outcome. I mean, one norm might be whether it's acceptable for women to work outside of home. Another norm might be whether family, life and children will suffer when mother works outside, outside of home. It looks like there are, I mean, multiple, norms, multiple subie feeding into this meta belief about whether women should be participating in the workforce.

Investigating Spillover Effects of Correcting Misperceived Social Norms

00:04:45 - I don't know what is gonna happen to the other norms. So that is what we are investigating. We are asking if we correct one of the misperceived norms, what is gonna happen to the others? Is there going to be spillover effects? That is what we are doing in this paper. There are lots of papers about factors affecting female labor force participation among, among them, the social norms have been explored, explored

00:05:14 - Christina Bihi has lots of, lots of papers discussing the effect of social norms in shaping individual behavior and decision making. But in addition to the literature on social norms, recently researchers started to become interested in misperception of social norms. In fact, there is this review article by Burstein and Yang, Burstein and Yang 2022. They look at all these papers, research studies,

00:05:46 - and looking at the correction of these misperceptions and how they affect the outcomes. I think that paper is going to be really useful for someone who is interested in misperceptions correction of correction of misperceptions and their effects on outcomes. Our paper is closely related to is Stein At all 20 20, 20 20 paper, they survey Saudi med males about what they think about women working outside of home. So they find that Saudi men are fine for work, fine

Underestimating Support: Female Workforce Perceptions in Saudi Arabia

00:06:19 - but they are underestimating the opinions of others. I mean, marriot, Saudi men. As a result, they are underestimating the positive social norm. So when they tell this man that actually most of the people around you are supportive for women to work outside of home, they find that the outcomes for the wives of these Saudi men increased in the labor market. I mean, these, their wives started to apply

00:06:52 - So they find there's a positive effect of these, I mean, information treatments on outcomes. So unlike these studies that primarily focus on correcting misperception of one single norm and its effects on desired outcomes, our study examines the spillover effects of information treatments, on related beliefs. So we are not only interested in outcomes,

00:07:24 - closely related beliefs are affected by the information treatments, which aim to correct some misperceptions. So that paper was, they had participants were Saudi Marriot males. In our study, we surveyed, Saudi male and female university students from a large public university in Saudi Arabia. So we conducted an online survey study with three waves,

Exploring Perceptions of Female Labor Participation Norms

00:07:52 - we asked our participants their personal beliefs and their perception of norms related to female labor force participation. For example, we ask them whether, I mean, they think it's okay for women to work outside of home, but we did not only ask that question, remember that there are multiple norms affecting female labor participation. We did not only ask about the norm, regarding women working outside of home, but we also asked them whether they believe family, life

00:08:27 - and what their perception of, perception of the society's, beliefs about this. the, the same thing. so we, we ask participant to guess, what others think, on these same questions. We ask these same questions in every wave in order to understand whether what we measured is consistent, o over time. And in the first

00:08:59 - for women to work outside of home is positive. Everyone thinks that women should be allowed to work outside of home, however, they are severe underestimated. Once we found this misperception, we wanted to collect this misperception in the third wave, and we collected this misperception by run, running a randomized control trial. What we did was for half of the random selected subjects,

Unexpected Backfire of Positive Information on Women's Labor Beliefs

00:09:28 - The other half we were in the control group. In the treatment group, we told them what is the, I mean, real support for women to work outside of home and in the control group, they did not receive any information. And then we compare these two groups in terms of their related beliefs on other questions, such as children, whether children will suffer when mother works, because we are interested in spillover effects on related beliefs.

00:10:00 - remember we are giving them a positive information for vma female labor participation, right? But this positive information we found have backfired, and the treatment subjects started to believe that a larger share of others think that children will suffer when mother works. So this was kind of, I mean, surprising for us, because you may think that may, there may be some positive spill over effect.

00:10:32 - but we find the, I mean, negative effect. So, what might be the possible, mechanisms is that, so people have these overarching beliefs. We can call it meta beliefs, if you like, about female labor participation. And this meta belief is influenced by a variety of subie, right? One, one subie might be whether women should be working outside of home.

Understanding Cognitive Dissonance and Belief Revision

00:11:04 - When mother works, there are multiple subie feeding into the meta belief, right? So the existence, the existence of these, multiple subie subie creates a room for individuals to interpret n information in different ways. This interpretation process can be understood through the lens of cognitive dizziness theory and the self-serving belief distortion.

00:11:32 - that people experience psychological discomfort when, when they hold conflicting beliefs or when there's an information contradicting their existing beliefs, right? So, this, in order to reduce this discomfort, individuals may change their beliefs or find justifications for inconsistencies. For example, a person underestimating societal support for women working outside of home. When they receive this positive information, they start

00:12:04 - In order to reduce this discomfort, they may revise their, closely related beliefs in the negative direction so that everything is going to make sense. So this is one explanation, one mechanism. It may be the other is self-serving belief distortion, what we call self-serving belief distortion. it suggests that people selectively interpret information in order to hold on to beliefs that will make future look bright.

Navigating Misperceptions: Impacts on Social Norms and Gender Roles

00:12:37 - male university student, who wants to hold on to belief that women entering the workforce is not gonna create additional competition, or it is not going to disrupt traditional gender roles despite this new information we are giving to them, right? To maintain this comforting belief, they may update another subie in the negative direction so that they can hold onto discomforting belief

00:13:08 - competitive that much. So that might be another mechanism, for this finding. One thing we can say from this research is that correcting misperceptions may affect not only the outcomes, but also closely related beliefs. This is very important for researchers to, I mean, to pay attention to, because remember, we wanna increase the desired outcomes.

00:13:40 - of positive social norms. That is what all the research studies have been doing before, right? But when we correct one misperception on a specific norm, we don't know what is gonna happen to another closely related norm, which is also important for the, for the desired outcome. In our case, we may labor participation. I think researchers will, should pay attention to these,

Exploring Mechanisms Behind Spillover Effects

00:14:23 - and also it'll be fruitful, to investigate. Okay? these, I mean the mechanisms, closely. Why, why do we have these spillover effects? What are the mechanisms? Can we test? Can we disentangle different, possible mechanisms?

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