Research on social norms continues to expand rapidly, fueled in recent years by our desire to understand the roles that social influence processes play in people’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is in keeping with the rapid growth in social norms research our field has seen in many other domains that affect people’s health and wellbeing.
In this special issue of Health Communication, we invite scholarship at the intersection of social norms and health. Many other fields of inquiry, in addition to Communication, invest significant scholarly resources to understand, document, and expand our conceptual understanding about how social norms are manifest in society, how they evolve over time, and how they influence people’s attitudes and behaviors. We welcome all perspectives in this special issue, as long as communication processes and human health remain a primary focus of the scholarship, given the focus of the journal, Health Communication, where this work will be published.
We are particularly interested in papers that improve our conceptual understanding of social norms while also promoting health and wellbeing. Listed below are some of the perspectives that would fit well within the scope of the special issue:
Use of social norms perspectives and concepts in health interventions
• Cultural variations in how social norms are understood, formulated, and acted upon to affect health
• Understanding causal mechanisms in normative influences on health behaviors
• The role of social norms in affecting health equity, health disparities, or social justice
We have received a number of requests for a later deadline for submissions (from March 1), and we are extending the deadline to May 1, 2023.
